Quote 7
"Lou Ann, I moved in here because I knew we'd get along. It's nice of you to make dinner for us all, and to take care of Turtle sometimes, and I know you mean well. But we're acting like Blondie and Dagwood here. All we need is some ignorant little dog named Spot to fetch me my slippers. It's not like we're a family, for Christ's sake. You got your own life to live, and I've got mine. You don't have to do all this stuff for me." (6.65)
Why exactly is Taylor so resistant to playing house with Lou Ann? How does it make her feel to be the Dagwood to Lou Ann's Blondie? This says plenty about perceived gender roles for these characters, as well as their choice in comic strips.
Quote 8
Within ten minutes Lou Ann and I were in the kitchen drinking diet Pepsi and splitting our gussets laughing about homeostasis and bean turds. We had already established that our hometowns in Kentucky were separated by only two counties, and that we had both been to the exact same Bob Seger concert at the Kentucky State Fair my senior year. (5.62)
Both Lou Ann and Taylor feel out of their elements in Tucson, and so they're perfectly primed to become the best of friends. More than anything else, it's their shared sense of homeland that draws them together at first: as two Kentucky gals in a "foreign" land, each of them can feel sure that at least one other person in town can understand her. How they started talking about Bob Seger within ten minutes, we can only guess.
Quote 9
There was a whole set of things I didn't understand about plants, such as why hadn't the sweet peas been killed by the frost? [...] While the water glugged out over the sweet peas I noticed Mattie looking at me with her arms crossed. Just watching. I missed Mama so much my chest hurt. (6.36)
Throughout The Bean Trees, the life cycles and growing conditions of plants are almost always associated with human networks of kinship, friendship, and community. Taylor thinks of Mattie as one of her only two friends in Tucson, but this passage also suggests that Mattie is starting to stand in as a surrogate Mama in Taylor's life. Not to mention giving yet another plant-human link for you to chew on.