How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
He had finally come to accept – beaten into it by the tide of new ideas – that not all women were complete idiots, and he believed that Alba, who was too plain to attract a well-to-do husband, could enter one of the professions and make her living like a man. (10.25)
Thankfully, popular conceptions of the role of women in society change, and Esteban is forced to update his ideas about gender roles. That's not to say he's ever completely liberated from his antiquated patriarchal notion that men work in the public sphere and women work in the home – even while he pushes Alba to pursue a professional career, he thinks she'll be imitating a masculine lifestyle.
Quote #11
He said it was good for men to have a wife, but that women like Alba could only lose by marrying. (11.2)
Esteban's observation that women "lose" something by marrying is perceptive – by accepting a lesser role and permitting a man to have authority over her, a married woman certainly loses a measure of freedom and power in a patriarchal society. The marriages portrayed in this novel don't tend to reflect that kind of unbalanced relationship, however, suggesting that the idea of patriarchal authority is more of a performance than anything else.