“Of course, Father Andrew was not thinking about Harper’s body’s journey from girl to woman as that would be wrong and no doubt prompt further visits to the parish shrink.”

When Harper walks into Father Andrew’s office to discuss her father, the first thing the priest notices is the way her shirt lies flat on her as-yet-undeveloped chest. He then mentally reminds himself that he really shouldn’t be considering Harper’s body in this way, but his reasoning highlights his hypocrisy; his internal monologue moves quickly from the ethical ramifications to the practical inconvenience of visiting “the parish shrink.” His awareness of how close she is or is not to developing breasts highlights his objectification of women and girls and introduces the theme of the Latent Misogyny and the Sexualization of Minors.

“There was a near-constant bloodstream from these women—noses, knees, and elsewhere—and Bud wondered how they had any left.”

The comically hyperbolic description of Bud’s experience with the women and girls in his family emphasizes the way he tends to objectify women rather than understand them. In one moment, he thinks of women as “ethereal” creatures; in the next, he thinks of them as nearly bloodless due to their incessant bleeding. In either description, they become “other” to him—something he could not possibly understand, he thinks, so he simply gives up trying. The imagery also foreshadows Paul Alabaster’s harvesting of blood from trafficked girls and thus draws an implicit parallel between the two men’s misogyny.