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The sleek woman is an overdue pregnant woman on the same maternity ward as Adah. The sleek woman’s loving relationship to her much-older husband brings home to Adah how unhappy and abusive her marriage to Francis is. Despite her loving marriage, however, the sleek woman dies shortly after being transferred from the ward—showing the potential physical dangers of motherhood and childbirth even in the context of a loving marriage.
The Sleek Woman Quotes in Second Class Citizen
The Second Class Citizen quotes below are all either spoken by The Sleek Woman or refer to The Sleek Woman. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 9: Learning the Rules Quotes
Her adoptive parents were good, she added quickly, too quickly for Adah, who could never guess how it could be possible for somebody else to love you as if you were their very own flesh and blood. They did love her, her adoptive parents, but she was determined to make a happy home for herself, where she would be loved, really loved, and where she would be free to love. She had been lucky. It seemed as if her dream was coming true.
“It is not coming true; it is true. You are now almost like a princess,” Adah said, wanting to cry.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Sleek Woman Character Timeline in Second Class Citizen
The timeline below shows where the character The Sleek Woman appears in Second Class Citizen. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 9: Learning the Rules
The young, “sleek” woman in the bed next to Adah’s, who has a handsome, much older husband, chats to...
(full context)
...tube is removed from Adah’s nose and mouth. Able to talk again, she asks the sleek woman about her life—about the experience of being married to such a handsome man, about him...
(full context)
The sleek woman ’s husband arrives, and the surgical team comes to examine Adah. They bring a privacy...
(full context)
...her about her family. The women she has met on the ward start leaving. The sleek woman transfers elsewhere; shortly thereafter, Adah hears that she has died. Adah wants to leave the...
(full context)
