A Year Down Yonder Women and Femininity Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

Grandma looked closer. "Looky there," she said. "That's Kate Smith. Do you suppose that's a good picture of her? I hadn't any idea she was such a big, full-figured woman."

Kate Smith was a very big, very full-figured woman. She was as big as—Grandma. (3.104-105)

Grandma Dowdel doesn't have a Kardashian-approved body, but she's still comfortable with how she looks. Despite her confidence, she's still happy to see someone famous who looks like her and is a big, full-figured woman too.

Quote #5

Christmas was in the air, and Miss Butler had us girls making gifts in Home Ec. class. We ought to have been learning invisible mending and turning hems to make our clothes last. But Miss Butler decreed hot pads for our loved ones, made by crocheting used bottle caps into circular patterns. (4.1)

Even though it's rather sexist to separate the boys and girls into agriculture and home economics classes purely based on gender, Mary Alice doesn't necessarily object to the nature of the work she's being asked to do. She just wishes it was more practical. Now that's a Dowdel woman, through and through.

Quote #6

Underneath, she was wearing Grandpa's rubber chest-waders that were like rubber bib overalls…She was all in black rubber almost up to her chins.

Of all the figures she ever cut, this one took the cake. I often wondered what she'd buried Grandpa Dowdel in. She seemed to wear every stitch he'd owned. (4.15-16)

Grandma Dowdel obviously isn't the kind of woman who worries about how she looks all the time. She's quite pragmatic, and isn't above going out in all of her dead husband's hunting clothes if it means that she'll stay warm and dry.