How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Beatrice-Joanna Foxe snuffled a bereaved mother's grief as the little corpse, in its yellow plastic casket, was handed over to two men from the Ministry of Agriculture (Phosphorus Reclamation Department). They were cheerful creatures, coal-faced and with shining dentures, and one of them sang a song which had recently become popular. Much burbled on the television by epicene willowy youths, it sounded incongruous coming from this virile West Indian deep bass throat. (1.1.2)
This passage uses two images that often appear in racist descriptions of Black men: a sharp contrast between dark skin and white teeth, and an innuendo about their "virility." This is the first of many such descriptions of racialized characters in The Wanting Seed. What can we infer from them?
Quote #2
Miss Herschhorn, a Teutonico-Chinese, rapidly quacked the details into her audiograph; a printed card slid out of a slot; Dr Acheson stamped his signature—flowing, womanly. [. . .] Miss Herschhorn, a plain thin girl with dog's eyes and very lank straight black hair, made a moue at Dr Acheson. (1.1.5-6)
How does the narrative voice's description of Miss Herschhorn compare to its description of the men from the Ministry of Agriculture? What about its description of Dr Acheson, or Beatrice-Joanna herself?
Quote #3
This was the British people; rather, to be more accurate, this was the people that inhabited the British Islands—Eurasian, Euro-African, Euro-Polynesian predominated, the frank light shining on damson, gold, even puce; her own English peach, masked with white flour, was growing rarer. (1.3.5)
In this passage, is the narrative voice offering impersonal third-person narration, or is there some free indirect discourse at work here too?