The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Women and Femininity Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph), with the exception of Part V, which runs (Part#. "Short Title". Paragraph). Part V has no numbered chapters—only title headings.

Quote #1

Eva is a cheerful man-chaser. But she doesn't chase them to marry them. Not love but only friendship and sensuality exist for her. So she has many friends: men are not afraid she wants to marry them, and women have no fear she is seeking to deprive them of a husband. (II.3.4)

Eva sounds like a pretty liberated lady, though our admiration for her is tarnished a bit by Kundera's tone—which makes her sound a little too determined in her radical ideology. Eva, however, sticks to her guns and lives her life the way she wants to: like a man in a Kundera novel.

Quote #2

Eva arrived, tall, thin, and badly dressed. She looked like an oversized adolescent who had put on her grandmother's clothes. Seated across from him, she explained that social conventions meant nothing to her when she was attracted to a man. That she only allowed friendship and sensuality. Signs of embarrassment and effort showed on her face, and Karel felt a kind of fraternal compassion for her rather than desire. (II.5.2)

We can only ever see women through the eyes of men who want them for something. In this case, it's Eva standing up under the scrutiny of Karel's eyes. When they meet for the first time, Eva has a well-developed philosophy about sex and love but little experience to back it up. Karel's gaze is devastating in this respect, making her feel more awkward than she looks.

Quote #3

...and suddenly I felt a wild desire to make love to her. More exactly: a wild desire to rape her. To throw myself on her and seize her in a single embrace along with all her unbearably exciting contradictions, with her perfect clothes and her rebellious intestines, with her reason and her fear, with her pride and her shame. (III.9.2)

Kundera's inexplicable desire to rape his vulnerable friend—the one who risked her life and career to give him a job—has something to do with getting at the core of her identity. Of course, when he gets to that "diamond," he plans to rip it out. In most cases in this novel, sexual violence against women has everything to do with controlling something in a world gone mad.