Quote 43
Rafaela […] wishes there were sweeter drinks, not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island, like the dance hall down the street where women much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and open homes with keys. And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string. (31.4)
Feminine freedom, symbolized by the act of opening a home with a key, is here portrayed as being in constant jeopardy.
Quote 44
I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am the one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate. (35.5)
Perceiving herself to have no feminine power of her own, Esperanza decides to play with gender roles and adopt the mannerisms of a man.
Quote 45
But Sally doesn't tell about the time he hit her with his hands just like a dog, she said, like if I was an animal. He thinks I'm going to run away like his sisters who made the family ashamed. Just because I'm a daughter, and then she doesn't say. (37.3)
To Sally's father, the figurehead of sexist conservatism in Esperanza's society, being female is just cause for punishment. He seems to see women as sources of familial and perhaps societal shame.