How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
I liked being one of the women with my aunts, liked feeling a part of something nasty and strong and separate from my big rough boy-cousins and the whole world of spitting, growling, overbearing males. (6.110)
Earlier, Bone envied her uncles and boy cousins, but now she has found herself accepted into a kind of community of women. What has changed? And what is it about her aunts that she finds to be "nasty and strong and separate"?
Quote #5
"There's a way he's just a little boy himself, wanting more of your mama than you, wanting to be her baby more than her husband. And that an't so rare, I'll tell you." (9.38)
We've already seen how the women of Bone's family see the men as overgrown boys, but Glen takes it to an extreme by actually seeing Bone as some sort of competition for Anney's love, at least subconsciously. We could get way Freudian with this (and we will—stay tuned), but the question for now is: do you agree or disagree with Dr. Ruth's analysis?
Quote #6
"A man belongs to the woman that feeds him."
"Bullshit," Aunt Alma insisted. "It's the other way around and you know it. It's the woman belongs to the ones she feeds" (10.72-73).
So, it seems like the Boatwright men and the Boatwright women see the same things differently. Who'da thunk, right? Earle sees himself as devoted to the women who care for him, while Alma sees herself as a slave to the ones she cares for. We're getting both perspectives here, and it's interesting to see how they differ: Earle is more focused on how women make him feel, while Alma is more focused on the work she has to do to keep a man. We'd like to point out, by the way, that the sentence that comes right before this one is: "Mama said he's eaten so many of her biscuits by now he was like a child of her own" (10.71). It's yet another in which the men seem like children in this novel.