How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
What you've got to remember, […] is that most women are liberated right now. They like what they're doing. They do it because they like it. (3.2.132)
Aside from Janet and Joanna, how many of the women at the party on Riverside Drive would disagree with Ewing?
Quote #2
Last year I finally gave up and told my mother I didn't want to be a girl but she said Oh no, being a girl is wonderful. Why? Because you can wear pretty clothes and you don't have to do anything; the men will do it for you. She said that instead of conquering Everest, I could conquer the conqueror of Everest. (4.11.1)
Women like Mrs. Wilding and Saccharissa like to talk about women's ability to conquer men, but what do they really mean by "conquer"? Is it the same thing that Jael is thinking when she talks about winning the war?
Quote #3
There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry training, the stupidity training, the placation training. (7.5.4)
One way of refuting Ewing's argument that women "like" their gender roles is to argue that, if women are trained to like them, then that liking doesn't really count. According to The Female Man, what social institutions (family, church, state, school, etc.) "train" women in this way?
Quote #4
How am I to put this together with my human life, my intellectual life, my solitude, my transcendence, my brains, and my fearful, fearful ambition? (7.5.4)
Joanna's use of the word "transcendence" is significant here. In Western philosophical and religious traditions, women have typically been associated with "immanence": i.e., the body, the drives, the instincts. Men, on the other hand, have typically claimed the realm of "transcendence": i.e., rational thinking, cognitive activity, and everything else that's said to separate "man" from "beast."
Quote #5
Do you enjoy playing with other people's children—for ten minutes? Good! this reveals that you have Maternal Instinct and you will be forever wretched if you do not instantly have a baby of your own. (7.5.5)
Why does Joanna satirize the notion of maternal instinct? Who are the healthiest and happiest mothers in this novel, and who are the most depressed?
Quote #6
Are you lonely? Good! This shows that you have Feminine Incompleteness. (7.5.6)
This may be another of the novel's subtle allusions to psychoanalysis. Thinkers like Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan argued that women were defined by "lack," specifically, their lack of a penis.
Quote #7
Do you like men's bodies? Good! This is beginning to be almost as good as getting married. This means that you have True Womanliness, which is fine unless you want to do it with him on the bottom and you on the top, or any other way than he wants to do it. (7.5.7)
Is Joanna suggesting that womanliness and femininity are related to women's sexual subservience to men? If so, what do you make of that argument?
Quote #8
Always the same. I sit on, perfectly invisible, a chalk sketch of a woman. An idea. A walking ear. (8.8.33)
Women in The Female Man often feel as though they are "invisible" to men. How does Jael turn invisibility to her advantage? Is any other character able to do the same?
Quote #9
Of course you don't want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you're intelligent. You don't want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don't want me to despise myself; you only want to ensure the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous tribute to your natural qualities. (8.10.32)
Jael likes to lay the sarcasm on thick. What point is she making here, underneath the cutting wit?
Quote #10
When I speak now I am told loftily or kindly that I just don't understand, that women are really happy that way, that women can better themselves if they want to but somehow they just don't want to. (9.3.1)
When Ewing makes statements like these to Janet and Joanna at the party on Riverside Drive, Joanna doesn't dare contradict him. How does the novel itself refute opinions like these?