How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Bobolink came up the road out of the trees and went across the railroad and into the trees again like a bird, with Cousin Drusilla riding astride like a man and sitting straight and light as a willow branch in the wind. They say she was the best woman rider in the country. (3.2.12)
This sentence has three similes to compare unlike things. Bobolink, the horse, runs like a bird, which makes us think he must be moving quick and light. Drusilla rides like a man because she has her legs hanging on either side of the horse instead of both on the same side (plus she's light as a willow branch, which is about as light as a tree simile can get). So at that time, a woman acting like a man was as strange as a horse acting like a bird.
Quote #2
Her hair was cut short; it looked like Father's would when he would tell Granny about him and the men cutting each other's hair with a bayonet. She was sunburned and her hands were hard and scratched like a man's that works. (3.2.24)
Cousin Dru is all about pushing gender boundaries. Her hair, skin, and hands all show signs of outdoor work. That may seem normal for all you urban gardeners or cross-country runners, but at the time all of those signs showed that Dru was not a proper lady and acted more like a man than a woman.
Quote #3
[E]verybody thought that the food we had to eat in 1862 and 63 would finish killing him, even if he had eaten it with women to cook it instead of gathering weeds from ditch banks and cooking them himself. (4.2.2)
Brother Fortinbride is a survivor, and everyone marvels that he survived his own cooking. It isn't that he's a particularly bad cook; it's that he's a man. In the 19th century cooking was women's work, and we can see from this quote that the roles were pretty hard and fast.
Quote #4
"Maybe it's the wrong season for women and children….Folks hereabouts is got used to having their menfolks killed and even shot from behind. But even the Yankees never got them used to the other." (5.2.27)
Yikes. When this guy talks about season he's not talking about the holidays. He's talking about hunting—people are upset because, even if they did get used to men being killed in the war, they didn't get used to women and children being hunted and murdered.
Quote #5
And so now Father's troop and all the other men in Jefferson, and Aunt Louisa and Mrs Habersham and all the women in Jefferson were actually enemies for the reason that the men had given in and admitted that they belonged to the United States but the women had never surrendered. (6.1.1)
Battle of the Sexes, Civil War Edition. The men, who fought, lost, and then gave up, must face an enemy even fiercer than the Yankees: their women. The women are the real "unvanquished" from the book's title, because they do not give up their traditions after defeat.
Quote #6
Ringo and I were fifteen then; we felt almost exactly like we had to eat and sleep and change our clothes in a hotel built only for ladies and children. (6.1.2)
You might have noticed that women and children get lumped into the same category (versus men) a lot in this novel. They're supposedly the helpless ones, the ones who the men are off protecting. We know, though, that often it's the women (like Granny) and children (like Bayard and Ringo) who are the real fighters.
Quote #7
Aunt Louisa had cried in the pokeberry juice about how she did not know where Drusilla was but that she had expected the worst ever since Drusilla had deliberately tried to unsex herself by refusing to feel any natural grief at the death in the battle not only of her affianced husband but of her own father.... (6.1.3)
Poor Aunt Louisa. She just doesn't understand where she went wrong. She's got an idea in her head of how the world is supposed to be, and the war has really screwed it up. One of the biggest problems comes with how men and women are supposed to act. When her daughter doesn't act like a "lady," that's as big a tragedy for her as the death of her husband.
Quote #8
[W]hen Aunt Louisa told her that she and Father must marry at once Drusilla said Cant you understand that I am tired of burying husbands in this war? that I am riding in Cousin John's troop not to find a man but to hurt Yankees? (6.1.4)
Once again, the clash of the generations is all about gender roles. Aunt Louisa is trying to get her daughter to act how she thinks a lady should; Drusilla has experienced so much loss through the war that she no longer sees how traditional gender roles fit into her life. The war has changed her as well as her ideas about the way the sexes should behave.
Quote #9
Aunt Louisa…did hope and pray that Mrs Compson had been spared the sight of her own daughter if Mrs Compson had one flouting and outraging all Southern principles of purity and womanhood that our husbands had died for…. (6.2.1)
We wonder if, in a poll of dead Confederate soldiers, any of them would have said they were fighting for purity and womanhood. You never know, but we would guess they would lean more toward states' rights, property (of slaves) rights, and stuff like that. But gender roles are wrapped up in every aspect of culture, so in a way Aunt Louisa is right: Southern womanhood is a part of Southern culture, which is what the soldiers were fighting for.
Quote #10
So Father came out too and we went down to the spring and found Drusilla hiding behind the big beech, crouched down like she was trying to hide the skirt from Father even while he raised her up. "What's a dress?" he said. "It dont matter. Come. Get up, soldier."
But she was beaten, like as soon as she let them put the dress on her she was whipped; like in the dress she could neither fight back nor run away. (6.2.21)
Think about this next time you pick up the first dirty jeans you find on your floor: clothing has the power to define, and defeat, a person. Putting on the dress is, for Dru, the last straw. She loses her freedom when she puts it on; it's like a sign blinking "woman." Clothing is a really important marker in our society, and not just for the people seeing it, but also for the people wearing it.