How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
I got undressed and I looked at myself and I began to cry. Hush, Luster said. Looking for them aint going to do no good. They're gone. (1.947)
Benjy is castrated after he attempts to reach out to girls walking by the road. This is the one passage which overtly references the castration – which is only presented here as a loss which has already occurred.
Quote #5
Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn't matter and he said, That's what's so sad about anything: not only virginity […] (2.13)
Ouch. Mr. Compson’s got a point here. Musing that Southern values for women (including chastity) were invented by men who want idealized images of the women in their lives, he suggests that virginity is only as important as Quentin thinks is. Like so many other things in this novel, it’s all in Quentin’s head.
Quote #6
Why wont you bring him to the house, Caddy? Why must you do like n***** women do in the pasture the ditches the dark woods hot hidden furious in the dark woods. (2.76)
Quentin’s attempt to hurt Caddy comes off as a racial slur – he tries to shame her by equating her with black women. It’s interesting, though, that he seems pretty investing in imagining Caddy running off into the woods. There’s an awful lot of adjectives here – almost as if he’s trying to picture what Caddy does in the woods as he’s speaking to her.