No age can ever have been as stridently sex-conscious as our own.

Danielay's Blob-Along to A Room of One's Own

My dear friend, Dan, read this book along with me, and his thoughts are below. Enjoy!

These are a couple brief thoughts to share before turning it over to the thoughts and commentary of women...quotes from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own and from women of whom it seemed to remind while reading this work:

Firstly, A Room of One's Own should be required reading for every boy in this blobber’s high school. Perhaps every boy in high school anywhere. Apart from the pathetically-few women authors who were taught, the teachers barely, or not ever, reflected upon the issues of gender when their works were taught. And one can only speculate the damage that may have been somewhat mitigated had such sexism not still been perpetuated.

And finally, barring few miniscule changes or updates, this work of Woolf’s could very well have been written today. And that makes this blobber mostly sad. Even Woolf said as much for her own time, how slow the march to equality has been:

• That puts the matter in a nutshell, and when I tell you, rather to your surprise, that this sentence was written not in August 1828 but in August 1928...

Or 2018 maybe? But we must keep pushing forward. Onward. Onward. Onward.

On women's access

Instantly a man’s figure rose to intercept me. —Woolf, ARoOO

Gate after gate seemed to close with gentle finality behind me. Innumerable beadles were fitting innumerable keys into well-oiled locks; the treasure-house was being made secure for another night. —Woolf, ARoOO

Who run the world?
Girls
Who run the world?
Girls
Who run the world?
Girls
Who run the world?
Girls
Who run the world?
Girls
—Beyoncé

On the place of women in art

There would always have been that assertion – you cannot do this, you are incapable of doing that – to protest against, to overcome. Probably for a novelist this germ is no longer of much effect; for there have been women novelists of merit. But for painters it must still have some sting in it; and for musicians, I imagine, is even now active and poisonous in the extreme. -Woolf, ARoOO

And, I wondered, would Pride and Prejudice have been a better novel if Jane Austen had not thought it necessary to hide her manuscript from visitors? -Woolf, ARoOO

Film is a patriarchal system. It’s built by men for men. Predominantly for white men. That’s the history of the medium in the United States. [...] It comes down to who gets to tell the story. If the dominant images that we have seen throughout our lifetimes, our mothers’ lifetimes, our grandmothers’ lifetimes, have been dominated by one kind of person, we take that, we internalize it, we drink it in as true, as fact. It’s tragic. Because it goes beyond just the film industry. These are the images of ourselves that we consume. It affects the way we see ourselves, and the way that other people see us. I feel like we have been lured into a sense of complacency, “The land of the free,” you know, “Equality for all.” All those things that we say, but we don’t really do. It’s a really dynamic time we’re in, you know. I feel really energized and electrified by the time that we’re in. These times will be studied. So the question is, “What did you do? What did you do during this time?” –Ava DuVernay in Time

On men in power:

He was not in my picture a man attractive to women. He was heavily built; he had a great jowl; to balance that he had very small eyes; he was very red in the face. His expression suggested that he was labouring under some emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he were killing some noxious insect as he wrote, but even when he had killed it that did not satisfy him; he must go on killing it; and even so, some cause for anger and irritation remained. —Woolf, ARoOO

Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price. —Woolf, ARoOO

[X]’s signature has absolutely no curves, only angles. Curves in handwriting show softness, nurturing and a maternal nature. Angles show a writer who is feeling angry, determined, fearful, competitive or challenged. When a script is completely devoid of curves, the writer lacks empathy and craves power, prestige and admiration. Besides the bigheadedness that shows in this script there is something else that is rather over-sized—the “p” in “[Xxxx]p.” This large phallic symbol shouts, “Me … big hunk of man.” —Michelle Dresbold, in Politico Magazine (name eXcised)

On representation

But what I find deplorable, I continued, looking about the bookshelves again, is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century. —Woolf, ARoOO

It seemed a pure waste of time to consult all those gentlemen who specialise in woman and her effect on whatever it may be – politics, children, wages, morality – numerous and learned as they are. One might as well leave their books unopened. —Woolf, ARoOO

And yet, I continued, approaching the bookcase again, where shall I find that elaborate study of the psychology of women by a woman? —Woolf, ARoOO

Three-point-perspective, that illusion that gives us the idea of a single, stable world view, a single perspective? Picasso said, “Noooo! Run free! You can have all the perspectives. That’s what we need. All of the perspectives at once. From above, from below, inside, out, the sides. All the perspectives at once!” Thank you, Picasso! What a guy! What a hero, thank you. But tell me, any of those perspectives a woman’s? No, well then I’m not fucking interested. You just put a kaleidoscope filter on your cock. You’re still painting flesh vases for your dick flowers. —Hannah Gadsby, Nanette

On reputation

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. —Woolf, ARoOO

Do you know what should be the target of our jokes at the moment? Our obsession with reputation. We’re obsessed with it. We think reputation is more important than anything else, including humanity. And do you know who takes the mantle of this myopic adulation of reputation? Celebrities. And comedians are not immune. They’re all cut from the same cloth. Donald ****p. Pablo Picasso. Harvey Weinstein. Bill Cosby. Woody Allen. Roman Polanski. These men are not exceptions. They are the rule. And they are not individuals; they are our stories. And the morale of our story is “We don’t give a shit. We don’t give a fuck about women or children. We only care about a man’s reputation.” What about his humanity? These men control our stories. And yet they have a diminishing connection to their own humanity, and we don’t seem to mind so long as they get to hold on to their precious reputation. Fuck reputation. Hindsight is a gift. Stop wasting my time! —Hannah Gadsby, Nanette

On lenses

But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that; and how little can a man know even of that when he observes it through the black or rosy spectacles which sex puts upon his nose. —Woolf, ARoOO

“Wanna see a movie and get popcorn?” “Well,...I dunno. I have this rule, see… / I only go to a move if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it.. / ...who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.” / “Pretty strict, but a good idea.” “No kidding. Last movie I was able to see was Alien…” —Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For

On destructiveness and mental health

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. —Woolf, ARoOO

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. [...] We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength. And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.” —Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

On relationships

Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these– “Chloe liked Olivia . . .” Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women. —Woolf, ARoOO

It’s based on scholarship of Emily Dickinson where they were able to restore erasures to her poems and letters ... revealing her lifelong romantic entanglements and relationships with women. —Madeleine Olnek, director, about her film Wild Nights with Emily

On food (delightfully humorously)

After that came the partridges, but if this suggests a couple of bald, brown birds on a plate you are mistaken. —Woolf, ARoOO

Prunes and custard followed. And if any one complains that prunes, even when mitigated by custard, are an uncharitable vegetable (fruit they are not), stringy as a miser’s heart and exuding a fluid such as might run in misers’ veins who have denied themselves wine and warmth for eighty years and yet not given to the poor, he should reflect that there are people whose charity embraces even the prune. —Woolf, ARoOO

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. —Woolf, ARoOO

“Julia Child presents The Chicken Sisters! Miss Broiler. Miss Fryer. Miss Roaster. Miss Caponette. Miss Stewer. And old Madame Hen. But we’re spotlighting Miss Roaster of The Year! Measuring in at 14-15-14. We’re roasting Miss Chicken. Today, on The French Chef.” —Julia Child, The French Chef

“...people who love to eat are always the best people.” —Julia Child, in a letter

“Do it just as we’ve done it here. And remember that a soufflé will wait for you. You can get it ready two hours ahead, hold it, bake it about forty minutes before you serve it. The important thing is how to time it so neither one of you collapses.” —Julia Child, The French Chef

In conclusion

[...] and if an explorer should come back and bring word of other sexes looking through the branches of other trees at other skies, nothing would be of greater service to humanity; and we should have the immense pleasure into the bargain of watching Professor X rush for his measuring-rods to prove himself “superior.” —Woolf, ARoOO

-------------------------------End of Blob---------------------------------

I hope you've enjoyed reading Danielay's thoughts as much as I did, and reading the carefully curated words of women he selected! Back to 'The Once and Future King' I go! 

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Spoiler Spoiler Alert! This 'novel' is actually two essays Woolf drafted when asked to write about "Women and Fiction". So there is no official plot to this work, other than exploring these two concepts and their relationship to each other. 

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

That was fast! Let's get right to the meat of it, shall we?

I started this blog several days in to a long vacation/staycation/house-sitting for my mother, and during that time I read VORACIOUSLY, and it was glorious. I read three books in two days, all quite different, yet all interestingly interwoven. Later in the week, I read a fourth book that's all about money management (#reallifeyall) I read this work, of course, and then I read 'Ghost' by Jason Reynolds, since it's the community book for one of our sites this summer and I wanted to be in the know. The third book I read was 'We Were Eight Years in Power; An American Tragedy' by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Totally brilliant, very thought-provoking, definitely heavy, but an absolutely critical work. I'm not going to do a full blob post on it, even though it definitely ranks up here with the 'classics', but I'll share some parallels I saw between Woolf's work and his. I would also contend that Coates' 'Between the World and Me' belongs on these lists, but I've already read it, so I didn't think to include it on the second set. 

Since Virginia's work is fairly stream of consciousness, I'll share my thoughts in no particular order. 

Twelve little girls in two straight lines...
Did you know that Virginia Woolf's first name is Adeline? Adeline Virginia Stephen, then Woolf after she married. I like Adeline, but I also can't imagine Virginia Woolf being anything other than a Virginia. Isn't it funny how that happens? 

On fiction
I love reading how writers describe fiction. Here are a few of my favorite snippets of hers:

• Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. I love this line. 

• Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. 

• If one shuts one's eyes and thinks of the novel as a whole, it would seem to be a creation owning a certain looking-glass likeness to life, though of course with simplifications and distortions innumerable.

Material needs
Virginia gets real about the fact that writers, as, you know, human people, need to have some material things to be able to actually produce work. 

• "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." This is where the title of the work comes from, and is, I think, extremely apt. 

• What effect has poverty on fiction? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art? She asks the reader to realize that while fiction deals in the imaginary, the need for financial safety and physical space are very real for fiction writers, and for women in particular. 

• Intellectual freedom depends on material things. Perhaps sad, but eminently true!

I was struck by similar recollections that Ta-Nehisi Coates expresses, some hundred years later, but in what is arguably a worse, or at least as challenging, a position as an early 20th century woman, in terms of access and finances as a black man in today's America:

"This focus on money must seem strange, if you have never been without it, and it still must seem strange if you have been without it before, but think of the world of writing, as I once did, as some hallowed place beyond the reach of earthly difficulties. It is an easy mistake given that writing for a living, no matter how little, is still a relative privilege."

Then later, as he progresses in his career and undergoes a dramatic financial shift: 

"I can remember when that fear lifted, how it clarified my mind, how much easier it was to see and to think."

Just ask any writer - they'll tell you that MONEY IS REAL. And it really matters, much as we might wish it doesn't. 

Being a woman and accessing knowledge
Virginia spends most of this book strolling the grounds of an imaginary university which closely resembles Oxford (I think she calls it Oxbridge). Here are a few remarkable happenings: 

• Ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. One - EXQUEEZE ME? No. That simply won't do. I went to the library TODAY. To get a new library card (and to discover that I still owe 5 dollars. Whoops! I'll get that to you ASAP, library!) Two - I love the idea of a letter of introduction to the library. I know they mean a letter from a man, explaining why this person/woman is allowed in, but I thought of Alice, and being introduced to the pudding. "Alice, pudding; pudding, Alice", and how she couldn't eat the pudding once they'd been introduced. "Virginia, library; library, Virginia. No books for you!"

• Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. YASSSSSSSSSS KWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN. That's all I have to say about this line. 

• The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Lol. Is this line from the 1900s? Or today? Le sigh - #worktodo!

• Why are women...so much more interesting to men than men are to women? A very curious fact it seemed, and my mind wandered to picture the lives of men who spend their time in writing books about women; whether they were old or young, married or unmarried, red-nosed or hump-backed--anyhow, it was flattering, vaguely, to feel oneself the object of such attention, provided that it was not entirely bestowed by the crippled and the infirm. ahghaghaghghaghahgahgahghaghaghaghaghaghaghaghahgahgahghaghaghaghag.

Stream of consciousness narration
At first, reading Virginia's stream of consciousness was a little jarring for me, because I wasn't sure where it was going, or if it was going anywhere in particular. And then I thought, well, if Joyce can ramble on and Faulkner can confuse the hell out of us with his gibberish, why shouldn't Virginia have the opportunity to take us on a mental stroll? And eventually, I quite liked it. 

As I have already said that it was an October day, I dare not forfeit your respect and imperil the fair name of fiction by changing the season and describing lilacs hanging over garden walls, crocuses, tulips, and other flowers of spring. HA! I love this. 

Would she use verse? Would she not use prose rather?  I must leave these questions, if only because they stimulate me to wander from my subject into trackless forests where I shall be lost and, very likely, devoured by wild beasts.  I loved this playfulness with her stream of thought and then imagined diversions that had real (fictional) outcomes. It reminded me of Dickens as a narrator, a conspiratorial friend who was both open and vulnerable. 

A Woolf sentence
There were many great examples of this, the phenomenon of a Woolfian sentence, but I wanted to make sure I gave you at least one, in case you hadn't had a taste: 

It was the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window-panes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish (here I pushed into the garden, for, unwisely, the door was left open and no beadles seemed about), the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. Don't you feel like you just traveled to another planet and back, all in that one sentence? How does she do that? So incredible. #roundofapplause

Books as part of one long story
Virginia is a believer in a relatively common concept, that books are connected, and tell a communal and ongoing story. I love this thought, and particularly enjoy reading how different writers ascribe to this or not. 

Books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately. Woolf

And more than I wanted to write something original and new, I wanted to write something that black people would recognize as original and old, something both classic and radical. Ta-Nehisi Coates

For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. Woolf 

Oceans and centuries stood between these two works, and yet they, too, are connected, interwoven into that global tale that reaches through space and time. 

Women as the 'inferior' sex
I didn't read the criticism or theory surrounding these essays, but I'm sure they have populated many a women's studies or feminism class. Here are two nuggets I thought captured her stance quite well:

• Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority...It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power. 

• Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

zeugma (tinkered only ever so slightly!)
I modified one verb in this sentence to make it more completely zeugma, my ALL-TIME FAVORITE literary devices. Please enjoy. 

But while I pondered I had unconsciously, in my listlessness, in my desperation, been drawing a picture where I should, like my neighbor, have been drawing a conclusion."

Simply Stellar Lines

• On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders.

• One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Words, Wonderful Words
odalisque - a female slave or concubine in a harem, especially one in the seraglio of the sultan of Turkey

farrago - a confused mixture

As usual, I'll leave you with some of my favorite lines from the book. The first is advice and hopes that Virginia has for future female writers: 

By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter and street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.

The second is talking about 'rational intercourse', something which feels almost foreign in today's America. Here is, perhaps, the most eloquent and winning description of rational intercourse you will ever read: 

Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

So as you settle down to your next conversation, or even to dine well when next you can (which I hope is soon!), I echo Virginia's sentiments and say - No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. 

Love to all of you - read voraciously and speak rationally! Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night. 

I have come to distinguish what is really in me from what I foolishly imagined to be there.

The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore, translated into English by Surendranath Tagore (the author's nephew)

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
I do not wish to spoil this plot too completely for you (though odds are I will by accident later on in the blob anyway!) so I will just share a snapshot from each of the three main characters/narrators. The story takes place in Bengal, which is now Bangladesh (and I think another part of land which is part of present-day India). 

Bimala, a wife

• Shall I tell the whole truth? I have often wished that my husband had the manliness to be a little less good.

Nikhil, a landowner and a husband

• To win in an argument does not lead to happiness.

Sandip, a revolutionary

• 'I truly believe my country to be my God.' 

This is the plot in a nutshell; the overlapping, contradicting, sometimes harmonious repercussions of the above truths. (Though a 'truth', as we will read later, is not such a firm thing.)

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear readers, 
   In case you, like I, needed a refresher on where Bangladesh is, here's a little map of that part of the world. It's tucked in there by India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. 


Since this story centers on a fight for Bengali independence, I did a little digging. Here is a brief summary of what I learned. 

- India became a republic in 1950 (after it was colonized by Great Britain)

- For a time, there was an East and West Bengal, then later, an East and West Pakistan (though I think one of the Pakistans may have been where Bangladesh is now? This got a little fuzzy for me.)

- West Pakistan was not so keen on Bangladesh becoming its own country. In March of 1971, West Pakistan began a military crackdown on its eastern wing in an attempt to suppress Bengali calls for "self-determination rights". The war for independence lasted 9 months, and it is estimated that members of the Pakistani military and supporting Islamist militias killed up to 3 million people and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women. 

- In 1972, Bangladesh (literally meaning country of Bengal) - finally becomes its own country. Pakistan bans Bengali literature and music in state media, including the works of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. 

- Present day Bangladesh is home to roughly 163 million people, and it is the most densely-populated large country in the world.

New Words I Learned (I'm including this first because many of the words pop up later on, and it's helpful to review their definitions first)

zenana - literally meaning "of the women" or "pertaining to women," it refers to the part of a house belonging to a Hindu or Muslim family in South Asia which is reserved for the women of the household. The Zenana are the inner apartments of a house in which the women of the family live.

zamindar - in the Indian subcontinent, a zamindar was an 'aristocrat.' Typically hereditary, zamindars held enormous tracts of land and control over their peasants, from whom they reserved the right to collect tax on behalf of imperial courts or for military purposes.

meed - a deserved share or reward

anodyne - (noun) - a painkilling drug or medicine; (adj) not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, and often deliberately so

calumny - the making of false and defamatory statements in order to damage someone's reputation; slander

shibboleth - a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important; sometimes, a watchword

lucre - money, especially when regarded as sordid or distasteful or gained in a dishonorable way

nabob - a Muslim official or governor under the Mogul empire; a person of conspicuous wealth or high status; a person who returned from India to Europe with a fortune

dacoities - an act of armed robbery committed by a gang in India or Burma (Myanmar)

All right, let's dig in, shall we? I quite enjoyed this book. It was lyrically stunning, and somehow beautifully contemplative, even though not a terrible lot happened. I definitely feel like it belongs on our list of classics, though I'd love to give it a little feminist updating. ;)

Since the story centers on three characters, and we hear from each of them in turn, I think it only makes sense to share some moments that encapsulate each of them. 

Bimala, the Queen Bee, in her gold-bordered sari

• I was no longer the lady of the Rajah's house, but the sole representative of Bengal's womanhood. Bimala finds herself in a love triangle situation when Sandip, the revolutionary friend of her husband, Nikhil, decides to stick around and falls for her hard. She's seduced not only by Sandip himself, but also his oratory and calls for independence. 

• Never before had I had any opportunity of being present at a discussion between my husband and his men friends. There's a lot of interesting exploration of spaces in this book - Bimala gets access to many spaces that she would never have been privy to if Nikhil hadn't wanted to expose her to a more modern world experience.

• Bimala has no patience with patience. Her love is for the boisterous. Nikhil, on his wife.

• There must be two different persons inside me. One of these in me can understand that Sandip is trying to delude me; the other is content to be deluded.

Nikhil, the Rajah, the landowner, the zamindar, the husband

• 'What I want is, that I should have you, and you should have me, more fully in the outside world. That is where we are still in debt to each other." I loved that Nikhil wanted to offer Bimala the world in its fullness, and I loved this line.

• 'If we meet, and recognize each other, in the real world, then only will our love be true.'

• From the time my husband had been a college student he had been trying to get the things required by our people produced in our own country. Nikhil is just as devoted to Bengali independence as Sandip, but he goes about his politics in a more practical and patient fashion, which is dramatically less sexy to Bimala. 

• "My life has only its dumb depths; but no murmuring rush. I can only receive: not impart movement. And therefore my company is like fasting." I loved this line, and poor Nikhil thoughtfully imagining that it makes sense that Bimala looked elsewhere for company, because spending time with him was a kind of inaction. 

Sandip, the revolutionary, the wife-thief, the couch surfer

• The light in his eyes somehow did not shine true. 

• 'My country does not become mine simply because it is the country of my birth. It becomes mine on the day when I am able to win it by force.'

• 'I ask for whatever I want, and I do not always wait to ask before I take it.' This is Sandip in a nutshell. 

• Bimala, on Sandip: "I could not be sure whether he was a person, or just a living flame."

• Sandip, on Nikhil: "He has such a prejudice in favor of truth - as though there exists such an objective reality!"

• A student of Sandip's - "Sandip Babu rightly teaches that in order to get, you must snatch."

Here are a few more noticings and wonderings: 

The home and the world
I loved the way the affair between Sandip and Bimala was developed, especially since they only even touch once, and it's not in a sensual way. These lines walk you through its progression: 

Sandip: "Ever since my arrival, Nikhil's sitting-room had become a thing amphibious - half women's apartment, have men's: Bimala had access to it from the zenana, it was not barred to me from the outer side." 

Thus from bare suggestion we came to broad hint: the implied came to be expressed. 

Bimala: "I will not shirk the truth. This cataclysmal desire drew me by day and by night. It seemed deliberately alluring - this making havoc of myself." 

Nikhil, to Bimala: "'I tell you truly, Bimala, you are free. Whatever I may or may not have been to you, I refuse to be your fetters." 

Bimala"When I came to my room today, I saw only furniture - only the bedstead, only the looking-glass, only the clothes-rack - not the all-pervading heart which used to be there, over all. Instead of it there was freedom, only freedom, mere emptiness! A dried-up watercourse with all its rocks and pebbles laid bare. No feeling, only furniture." I love this line - no feeling, only furniture. 

Swadeshi movement
Swadeshi is the term for the Bengali independence movement at the time. I liked this line about Nikhil preceding them in the movement, and yet somehow feeling off kilter with everyone else:

• Then were all eyes turned on my husband, from whose estates alone foreign sugar and salt and cloths had not been banished. Even the estate officers began to feel awkward and ashamed over it. And yet, some time ago, when my husband began to import country-made articles into our village, he had been secretly and openly twitted for his folly, by old and young alike. When Swadeshi had not yet become a boast, we had despised it with all our hearts.

Also interesting was this line, considering that our three main characters are, I believe Hindu, and Bangladesh in present day is 90% Muslim: 

• On the 'Mussulmans' - They must be suppressed altogether and made to understand that we are the masters. They are now showing their teeth, but one day they shall dance like tame bears to the tune we play.

Caste is all/Intersectionality
Something that struck me in reading about their deep-seated desire for independence was the idea that there were still deep economic and class-based rifts in their own population, and there was no desire to undo or shift these levels.

• There will always be a large class of people, given to grovelling, who can never be made to do anything unless they are bespattered with the dust of somebody's feet, be it on their heads or on their backs. 

Outdoors

I loved this line of Nikhil's about the outside (she types as she has spent the ENTIRE day indoors because it is so unspeakably hot and humid here): 

As the late autumn afternoon wears on, the colours of the sky become turbid, and so do the feelings of my mind. There are many in this world whose minds dwell in brick-built houses - they can afford to ignore the thing called the outside. But my mind lives under the trees in the open, directly receives upon itself the messages borne by the free winds, and responds from the bottom of its heart to all the musical cadences of light and darkness.

Referents and Reverberations (I'll pick a line that reminded me of another book, and then I'll tell you which book that is, and why)

My sister-in-law never failed to get from my husband whatever she wanted. He did not stop to consider whether her requests were right or reasonable. But what exasperated me most as that she was not grateful for this. The familiar relations, and in particular, the relationship/frenemyship between Bimala and her sister-in-law reminded me very much of Mom's sister-in-law in 'Please Look After Mom'. Here's another amazing exchange between Nikhil and his sister-in-law, the 'Sister Rani': 

"But what is all this for, Sister Rani? Why have you been packing up all these things?
  'Do you not think I am going with you?'
  'What an extraordinary idea!'
   'Don't you be afraid! I am not going there to flirt with you, nor to quarrel with the Chota Rani! One must die sooner or later, and it is just as well to be on the bank of the holy Ganges before it is too late. It is too horrible to think of being cremated in your wretched burning-ground here, under that stumpy banian tree - that is why I have been refusing to die, and have plagued you all this time.' haghaghaghahgahghaghaghag.

Bimala - "'Sandip Babu, I wonder how you can go on making these endless speeches, without a stop. Do you get them up by heart, beforehand?" Anyone, any guesses? Mr. Collins? ;)

"Now I felt that there was no need to take anything at all. To set out and go forth was the important thing." This reminded me of this exchange from 'On the Road':

Dean: "Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there."
Sal:    "Where we going, man?"
Dean:  "I don't know but we gotta go."

Q and A Section - A few exchanges where questions are posed, and occasionally answered
Bimala: What do I want with the outside world?
Nikhil: The outside world may want you.

Nikhil: "What do you mean by being a witness on this or that side? Will you not bear witness to the truth? 

Sandip: 'Is the thing which happens the only truth?'

 ' What other truths can there be?'

'The things that ought to happen! The truth we must build up will require a great deal of untruth in the process." So much of the way Sandip talked reminded me of present-day American politics, in a very not great kind of way. 

Just a line I really liked: 

• "There was no mist in the winter sky. The stars were shining brightly. If, thought I to myself, as I lay out there, I had to steal these stars one by one, like golden coins, for my country - these stars so carefully stored up in the bosom of the darkness - then the sky would be blinded, the night widowed forever, and my theft would rob the whole world."

"Do you not know that in the immense cauldrons, where vast political developments are simmering, untruths are the main ingredients?" (Sandip) #fakenews, anyone?

"Better, surely, to laugh away the world than flood it with tears. That is, in fact, how the world gets on. We relish our food and rest, only because we can dismiss, as so many empty shadows, the sorrows scattered everywhere, both in the home and in the outer world. If we took them as true, even for a moment, where would be our appetite, our sleep?" (Nikhil) Ah, so true! It is overwhelming to feel what it means to be a human in today's world and in today's America. But surely it is better to laugh away these fears and feelings, than to flood our land with tears. 

I'll leave you with my favorite line, which reminded me very pleasantly of being a NASTY woman: 

"Possibly this is woman's nature. When her passion is roused she loses her sensibility for all that is outside it. When, like the river, we women keep to our banks, we give nourishment with all that we have: when we overflow them we destroy with all that we are."

Onwards to Virginia and some pontification! Keep each other safe; keep faith; good night!