In the Waiting Room Women and Femininity Quotes

Elizabeth is overwhelmed by the experience of seeing these women in the magazine. She tries to understand them by comparing their neck coils to light bulbs – to something she's familiar with. But this doesn't work out so well. She's still horrified by their breasts – by the markers of feminine maturity that she sees in these women.

After she hears her aunt cry out, Elizabeth finds a kind of connection with this other woman. She imagines that she's experiencing the same pain as her aunt is. It's a kind of collective – or group – traumatic experience.

Elizabeth asks: what connections hold humanity together? What tears us apart? Interestingly, in these lines, Elizabeth's vision of humanity is pretty female. We've got her aunt, the women in the magazine, herself. Maybe she's asking more specifically: what binds the women of the world together?