Recommended read, but here are just a couple insights that struck me …
“Women—married women with children, specifically—always seemed to be telling Emily she couldn’t understand certain things until she was married.” 15
Yeah, I used to get that a lot. I should’ve replied “Yeah, and you can’t understand certain things unless you remain unmarried.”
“But he says nothing, because in Rachel’s experience, men are allowed to just say nothing shen they’re wrong. Women are always forced to apologize, defend themselves.” 47
“There was no law that could put teenage boys in prison for sneaking in after curfew, or impregnating a girl of another race.” 338
(The novel is about the Female Refuges Act, from 1927, but still in effect in the early 1960s, in Ontario, Canada whereby “a parent could bring before a judge any female under the age of 25 years who proves unmanageable or incorrigible” to be imprisoned for up to 2 years. Similar for a woman found begging or leading “an idle or dissolute life”.)
