Woman on the Edge of Time Women and Femininity Quotes

Dolly still cares about Geraldo, even though he's awful. You can say she's stupid, and she sort of is, but Mattapoisett shows it's a stupidity caused by the society she's in, not by mental limitations. Dolly's options as a poor woman are limited, both financially and emotionally. If she'd been born in Mattapoisett, she could have been a geneticist.

This is advice from Connie's mother; the most Connie can hope for, she suggests, is to love her children. And Connie doesn't even have that, since her daughter is taken away from her. She's left loving Dolly, which is a pretty sad second-best.

Connie at first mistakes Luciente for a man, not because Luciente looks like a man, but because she acts like one—acting like a man here meaning that she isn't self-conscious and seems sure of herself. Luciente isn't beaten down enough for Connie to recognize her as a woman.