"And then I can use her more in the house," I heard my mother say. She had a dead-quiet regretful way of talking about me that always made me uneasy. "I just get my back turned and she runs off. It's not like I had a girl in the family at all."
Traditionally, female daughters are expected to take care of the house together with their mother, so they are taught from an early age that this is their duty. The opposite is true for boys who, although they work, have more freedom.
felt my mother had no business down here and I wanted him to feel the same way. What did she mean about Laird? He was no help to anybody. Where was he now? Swinging himself sick on the swing, going around in circles, or trying to catch caterpillars. He never once stayed with me till I was finished.
Laird never finished the work assigned to him, but she did and thought that was unfair.There was a clear difference just because one was a man and the other a woman.
I was given jobs to do and I would sit at the table peeling peaches that had been soaked in hot water, or cutting up onions, my eyes smarting and streaming. As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what she wanted me to do next. I hated the hot dark kitchen in summer, the green blinds and the flypapers, the same old oilcloth table and wavy mirror and bumpy linoleum.
The girl was assigned home-related tasks by her mother, in this case cooking. However, she did not like it; she preferred to work outside with her father.
She would tie her hair up like this in the morning, saying she did not have time to do it properly, and it would stay tied up all day. It was true, too; she really did not have time.
The woman did not have time to fix her hair because she had to do every single task in the house. This is a clear example of gender inequality.
It was an odd thing to see my mother down at the barn. She did not often come out of the house unless it was to do something – hang out the wash or dig potatoes in the garden.
The woman had a specific role in the house: housework. Instead, man never helped with the household chores.
I helped my father when he cut the long grass, and the lamb's quarter and flowering money-musk, that grew between the pens.
She didn't do risky work, she just helped to cut the grass. This is a clear reference to gender difference, where women are seen as fragile and not capable of doing the same jobs as men.
Laird came too, with his little cream and green gardening can, filled too full and knocking against his legs and slopping water on his canvas shoes. I had the real watering can, my father's, though I could only carry it three-quarters full.
Just because he was a boy, Laird was able to carry more water than she could because she was a woman.
Each of them had a real door that a man could go through, a wooden ramp along the wire, for the foxes to run up and down on, and a kennel
The narrator means that only a man can pass through these doors and women cannot, referring to the fact that it is only a job for men.
Oh," Gwen would simply say, "he seemed very pleasant." Sensing with feminine intuition that he expected more, she might add, "Harmless. Maybe a little stuffy."
She tries to please him by making comments that he would approve.
she would vivify for him what they had seen
I agree with Agustin Sotelo, I thought he was blind. That was my first impression.
knoaow,
I don't understand why she says this word like that.
"Mmmm. That would be reawy nice." As his left hand labored on the smooth, warm, pliable surface, his wife—that small something in her that was all her own—sank out of reach; night after night, she fell asleep.
Its my favorite part because is a kind of karma for him. He was bored because his ex wife fell asleep every night while he rubbed her back. Now, when his new wife says that it was late and he offers her a rub, she accept and she fell asleep like that every night like his previous wife.
"He could not know the world, was his fear, unless a woman translated it for him"
He wasn't able to know what his fear was until a woman made him realize what it was.
He suppressed a laugh, as though what he was going to tell her was too absurd or silly. “I was thinking of someone doing the can-can.” “Oh,” she said, reassured. “For a moment I was afraid you were thinking of your wife.”
This is my favorite part because it seems like he has been thinking about his wife all the way to the lake and I imagine that the answer of his lover could have left him with a feeling of guilty.
Mr. Fix-it
The wife says this to him with irony because he is always doing odd jobs.
Uh-huh,”
I think this could be a provocative expression, since then it says that her smile made her look pretty.