Our Town Gender Quotes

Well, of course, it’s none of my business – but I think if a person starts out to be a teacher, she ought to stay one. (I.66)

Well…I don’t have to tell you that we’re run here by a Board of Selectmen. – All males vote at the age of twenty-one. Women vote indirect. We’re lower middle class: sprinkling of professional men… ten per cent illiterate laborers. Politically, we’re eight-six per cent Republicans; six per cent Democrats; four per cent Socialists; rest, indifferent. Religiously, we’re eighty-five per cent Protestants; twelve per cent Catholics; rest, indifferent. (I.224-5)

It was your mother chopping wood. There you see your mother – getting up early; cooking meals all day long; washing and ironing; – and still she has to go out in the back yard and chop wood. I suppose she just got tired of asking you. She just gave up and decided it was easier to do it herself. And you eat her meals, and put on the clothes she keeps nice for you, and you run off and play baseball, – like she’s some hired girl we keep around the house but that we don’t like very much. Well, I knew all I had to do was call your attention to it. (I.353)

Well, you see, - on her wedding morning a girl’s head’s apt to be full of…clothes and one thing and another. Don’t you think that’s probably it?…A girl’s apt to be a mite nervous on her wedding day. (II.136, 138)

Every man that’s ever lived has felt that way about it, George; but it hasn’t been any use. It’s the womenfolk who’ve built up weddings, my boy. For a while now the women have it all their own. A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder making sure that the knot’s tied in a mighty public way. (II.141)

Charles, he said, Charles, start out early showing who’s boss, he said. Best thing to do is to give an order, even if it don’t make sense; just so she’ll learn to obey. And he said: if anything about your wife irritates you – her conversation, or anything – just get up and leave the house. That’ll make it clear to her, he said. And, oh, yes! he said never, never let your wife know how much money you have, never. (II.150)

I always expect a man to be perfect and I think he should be…Well, my father is, and as far as I can see your father is. There’s no reason on earth why you shouldn’t be, too. (II.205, 207)

Well, I feel it’s the other way round. That men aren’t naturally good; but girls are. (II.208)

Well, you might as well know right now that I’m not perfect. It’s not as easy for a girl to be perfect as a man, because we girls are more – more – nervous. (II.209)

And there’s Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb come down to make breakfast, just as though it were an ordinary day. I don’t have to point out to the women in my audience that those ladies they see before them, both of those ladies cooked three meals a day – one of ‘em for twenty years, the other for forty – and no summer vacation. They brought up two children apiece, washed, cleaned the house, - and never a nervous breakdown. (II.25)

Don’t you remember that you used to say, - all the time you used to say – all the time: that I was your girl! There must be lots of places we can go to. I’ll work for you. I could keep house. (II.347)