How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Her beauty did not fade, but she did not advertise it so in the passages and chambers. She read romances and slept much of the day. Mr. Sharpe employed her in sewing for the household… my mother wore not the finery of former days, but sober garments of simple linsey-woolsey in sad colors. Seated in the Negro gallery amongst other servants, Indians, and white boys banished for whispering and tricks, she appeared no different, no more peculiar in her circumstances, than any lady's maid. (2.12.6-7)
Cassiopeia's a changed woman. Gone are all the nice clothes and fancy airs—Cassiopeia's just like any other slave now. Her drop in status shows how much her sexual identity was a privilege, something the men at the College allowed her to have. It's a little weird, isn't it, that something as natural as sexuality can be so easily given and taken away by men in power?
Quote #8
"When my mother dances now, sir," said I, "men pull her more tightly to them than they do the other women… taking liberties… or they scarcely deign to touch her. Was it ever thus?" She passed from partner to partner out upon the floor. "I recall her dancing with utmost propriety and a singular beauty." (2.27.9)
Is Octavian growing up and finally seeing his mother's sexual allure for what it is? Or is it that their circumstances have changed so much? That his mother—now clearly under the command of the men in the house—has to do what they ask of her, including letting men "take liberties" with her while dancing, is pretty rough, though we're not sure whether Cassiopeia has changed or Octavian's just grown in his understanding of what's going on around him.
Quote #9
I was not looking at my mother, but at a woman who knew me, and I was a man who knew her; she was a girl of thirteen, newly arrived in a frigid, alien country; a woman who had been that girl; who had given birth in bondage, while men with devices and pencils had observed. She had played the harpsichord and painted. She was a woman who had known desire, and who had danced upon the knolls by Lake Champlain. She had flirted with the New World's great virtuosi. We stared at one another, and in that moment, we knew each other for the first and last time. (2.31.48)
Cassiopeia's on the verge of death here, and Octavian seems to meet her in this moment as her equal—he says of the two of them, "a woman who knew me, and I was a man who knew her." What Octavian means is that he sees all of her—not just a sexual plaything or object, but as a whole person, with a whole life, that is now coming to a tragic close.