How we cite our quotes: Act.Line
Quote #7
You want to look inside the bridal chamber? You want to see for yourself how a man cuts the virgin knot? (3.35)
When she is mocking Amusa, a market woman here implies that perhaps he is not a man, since he doesn't appear to know how to cut "the virgin knot." So once again, the play kind of implies that non-manly people (like women?) lack power.
Quote #8
My young bride, did you hear the ghostly one? You sit and sob in your silent heart but say nothing to all this. First I blamed the white man, then I blamed my gods for deserting me. Now I feel I want to blame you for the mystery of the sapping of my will. But blame is a strange peace offering for a man to bring a world he has deeply wronged, and to its innocent dwellers. Oh little mother, I have taken countless women in my life but you were more than a desire of the flesh. I needed you as the abyss across which my body must be drawn, I filled it with earth and dropped my seed in it at the moment of preparedness for my crossing. You were the final gift of the living to their emissary to the land of the ancestors, and perhaps your warmth and youth brought new insights of this world to me and turned my feet leaden on this side of the abyss. For I confess to you, daughter, my weakness came not merely from the abomination of the white man who came violently into my fading presence, there was also a weight of longing on my earth-held limbs. I would have shaken it off, already my foot had begun to lift but then, the white ghost entered and all was defiled. (5.42)
Remember when the Praise-Singer basically says that women can sap your power and bring you down? Well, that seems to be what Elesin thinks happened when he failed to cross over to the other side. Although other factors were at play, too, his first reaction was to blame his wife for making him too attached to this side of the life/afterlife divide. How convenient he insisted she marry him…
Quote #9
ELESIN [he gives her a long strange stare, as if he is trying to understand who she is]: You are the wife of the District Officer?
JANE: Yes. My name, is Jane.
ELESIN: That is my wife sitting down there. You notice how still and silent she sits? My business is with your husband. (5.62-64)
Um, yikes. Apparently in Elesin's view, wives should be seen and not heard. Which might be why is own wife doesn't even get a name in the play; she's just "the bride."