Song of Solomon Women and Femininity Quotes

They were so different, these two women. One black, the other lemony. One corseted, the other buck naked under her dress. One well read but ill traveled. The other had read only a geography book. But had been from one end of the country to another. One wholly dependent on money for life, the other indifferent to it. But those were the meaningless things. Their similarities were profound. Both were vitally interested in Macon Dead’s son, and both had close and supportive post-humous communication with their fathers. (1.5.139)

"You don’t know a single thing about either one of us – we made roses; that’s all you knew – but now you know what’s best for the very woman who wiped the dribble from your chin because you were too young to know how to spit. Our girlhood was spent like a found nickel on you. […] And to this day, you have never asked one of us if we were tired, or sad, or wanted a cup of coffee. […] Where do you get the right to decide our lives?" (1.9.215)

He hadn’t thought much of it when she’d told him, but now it seemed to him that such sexual deprivation would affect her, hurt her in precisely the way it would affect and hurt him, hurt her in precisely the way it would affect and hurt him. If it were possible for somebody to force him to live that way, to tell him, ‘You may walk and live among women, you may even lust after them, but you will not make love for the next twenty years," how would he feel? […] His mother had been able to live through that by a long nursing of her son, some occasional visits to a graveyard. What might she have been like had her husband loved her? (2.12.300)