How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Their first night in the Schloss he pulled off her robe, threw her across the bed and applied a dog whip to her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. [...] She cried and whimpered all night. In the morning Harry returned to her room, this time with a razor strop. (4.3)
Harry's repression, and his frustration with Evelyn's affair with Stanford White, leads him to take out his frustration and repression on Evelyn, continuing even when it's obvious he's causing her great pain. He can't express himself to her, so he sexually abuses her.
Quote #2
…to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and see his ideas begin to destroy sex in America forever. (5.9)
This is an interesting passage, because you get the feeling that the narrator is trying to tell us that a little bit of repression is maybe a good thing... that maybe in some ways we were better off when sex had a little more mystery to it.
Quote #3
At this moment a hoarse unearthly cry issued from the walls, the closet door flew open and Mother's Younger Brother fell into the room, his face twisted in a paroxysm of saintly mortification. He was clutching in his hands, as if trying to choke it, a rampant penis which, scornful of his intentions, whipped him about the floor... (8.9)
Alright, this is one funny scene. But notice the words Doctorow uses: Younger Brother is mortified as if he was a saint, and he's trying to choke his own penis, which is ignoring him. If this guy isn't repressed, then nobody is.