Lucy: A Novel Women and Femininity Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

[Mariah] had washed her hair that morning and from where I stood I could smell the residue of the perfume from the shampoo in her hair. Then underneath that I could smell Mariah herself. The smell of Mariah was pleasant [. . .] By then I already knew that I wanted to have a powerful odor and would not care if it gave offense (2.14).

You go, (stinky) girl! Lucy's defiant refusal to mask her own funky smell is a small but significant sign that she's not about to bow down to conventional expectations about how a woman should present herself.

Quote #2

[Mariah] thought fairy tales were a bad idea [. . .]; apparently stories like that would give the children, all girls, the wrong idea about what to expect in the world when they grew up. Her speech on fairy tales always amused me, because I had in my head a long list of things that contributed to wrong expectations in the world, and somehow fairy tales did not make an appearance on it (3.2).

So if fairy tales don't make the cut, what do you think would be on Lucy's list of things that give girls wrong expectations?

Quote #3

I did not like the kind of women Dinah reminded me of. She was very beautiful and it mattered a great deal to her. Among the beliefs I held about the world was that being beautiful should not matter to a woman, because it was one of those things that would go away [. . .] (3.14).

Yeah, it's probably not a good idea for a woman to base her self-worth on a face that's bound to get all wrinkly.