How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
This is our story to tell. He says it in his Ten Commandments way and it hits me that way—profoundly. You'd think for all the reading I do, I would have thought about this before, but I haven't. I've never once though about the interpretive, the storytelling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever. (26.45)
Wow, this is a pretty big moment for Lennie. She's learned to view her life in a completely new way. She can make the choice to think of her mother as a very sick woman, or she can think of her as a restless adventurer.
Quote #5
She hops on the stool across the counter from where I'm working, throws her book on the counter. It's by a Hélène Cixous. "Lennie, these French feminists are so much cooler than those stupid existentialists. I'm so into this concept of jouissance, it means transcendent rapture, which I'm sure you and Joe know all about—" (27.43)
Hélène Cixous believed that jouissance (which involves, among other things, sexual pleasure) is the source of a woman's creative power, and suppressing it would actually block empowerment.
Quote #6
"[…] These feminists are all about celebrating the body, is language." She whips the scarf in the air. "Like I said, they're all after jouissance. As a means, of course, of subverting he dominant patriarchal paradigm and the white male literary canon, but we can get into that another time." (27.77)
Sarah might be right about the French feminists approving of her idea to make Lennie seduce Joe. They were pretty pro-sexuality.