How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
There seemed [...] no woman [...] who had not seen her sister become part of the white man's great whorehouse, who had not, all too narrowly, escaped that house herself; [...] no man whose manhood had not been, at the root, sickened, whose loins had not been dishonored, whose seed had not been scattered into oblivion and worse than oblivion, into living shame and rage, and into endless battle. (2.2.288)
The oppression of black people in America, from Gabriel's perspective, hits them at their essential gender identities. The women are made into prostitutes, and the men lose their manhood. It is as though African Americans, during and after slavery, have been raped by white culture.
Quote #8
"I asked my God to forgive me," he said. "But I didn't want no harlot's son." "Esther weren't no harlot," she said quietly. "She weren't my wife." (2.2.358-60)
There it is again, the h-word. Gabriel basically sees all women as being either harlots or saints. There's no in-between for him. And while he is a holy man and a husband (h-words everywhere), who can be forgiven for their sin, Esther, as an unmarried and unrepentant woman, is a harlot.
Quote #9
"Gabriel," she said, "I been praying all these years that the Lord would touch my body, and make me like them women, all them women, you used to go with all the time." She was very calm; her face was very bitter and patient. "Look like it weren't His will. Look like I couldn't nohow forget… how they done me way back there when I weren't nothing but a girl." (2.2.367)
Remember how Deborah lost the right to be considered a woman through her rape? Well, this is her first and only statement on that in the novel. She wishes that she weren't traumatized, that she had sexual desire. The way she sees it, if she were to desire Gabriel, sexually, she would be a real woman.