How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #7
This argument is becoming degraded and ridiculous. I will leave you alone until loneliness, dependence, and a consciousness that I am very much displeased once again turn you into the sweet girl I married. There is no use in arguing with a woman. (6.5.20)
What's the crucial difference between the words "girl" and "woman" in this passage, and what does it tell us about the man who is speaking here?
Quote #8
I think I am a man; I think you had better call me a Man; I think you will write about me as a Man from now on and speak of me as a Man and employ me as a Man and recognize child-rearing as a Man's business; you will think of me as a Man and treat me as a Man until it enters your muddled, terrified, preposterous, nine-tenths-fake, loveless, papier-mâché-bull-moose head that I am a man. (7.2.10)
In this passage, what does the word "Man" represent? When Joanna becomes a "female man," does she embrace the kinds of masculinity we've seen elsewhere in the novel, or does she mean something different?
Quote #9
There must be a secret feminine underground that teaches them how to behave; in the face of their comrades' derision and savage contempt, in the face of the prospect of gang rape if they're found alone in the streets after curfew, in the face of the legal necessity to belong—every one of them—to a real man. (8.7.24)
The "changed" and "half-changed" Manlanders help to support the novel's argument that femininity and masculinity reflect social hierarchies, and that to be "feminized" is to be made vulnerable to violence and contempt.