But it was not just the blissful sting of the water. It was her nakedness. That she could be alone with her nakedness. And there was no demand on her nakedness, not from her husband, whose reaction to her nakedness was much too complex, nor from her babies, who when they were toddlers thought her nakedness a happy joke, or even from the mirror…
-- Narrator

Importance: Early in the novel, Irene takes a bath and considers the “demand[s]” (20) that the external world places upon her body. She notes that she feels a complex sense of objectification in her husband’s gaze, as well as a self-critical patina when she looks at herself in the mirror. When she is “alone with her nakedness” (20) in the bath, Irene is, at last, able to exert control and independence over her own body. In this way, Erdrich gestures at the many ways in which society...