Sunset Song Quotes

"What has father to do with it? and Will satred back at her shame-faced, Dont you know? Whats a bull to do with a calf, you fool?"

Will and Chris, Chris doesnt under stand procreation at this point in the novel demonstrating her innocence.

"he was feared what father would say if he found them lying like that. Chris thought of that angrily, puzzled and angrily"

Chris doesnt understand why her father would even think bad of Will and Chris keeping each other warm, again she doesnt understand her fathers ways yet or anything of the sexual nature

"But she was no more than ploughed land still, the furrows went criss cross"

Linked to the title of the chapter - shows that Chris is not near womanhood yet and that like a field being prepared for planting she too is just young being prepared for whats yet to come in the life of a woman.

"his face would go black with rage because of that sweetness that tempted his soul to hell"

John Guthrie is very religious and he is aware he cannot touch Jean until they are married.

"fine? we'll have what god in his mercy sends to us, woman. See you to that"

John keeps getting Jean pregnant and when Jean confronts John about it he demands that it is in gods will that Jean is to keep having children. Again a link to religion.

"Get out of that at once you shameful sinner, and get on your clothes"

Chris is in her pants washing the blankets when John Guthrie proclaims she is a sinner for doing so, he is not coolheaded and has a frustrated temperment when dealing with nudeness and things of a sexual nature. At this point Chris describes her father as a 'caged beast'

"If I ever hear you use that word again, I'll lib you. Mind that, I'll lib you like a lamb"

Will names a horse Jehova 

"Oh Chris my lass, there are better things than your books or studies or loving or bedding, theres the countryside your own and you its, in the days when you are neither bairn nor woman"

Jean Guthrie is from a peasent background in Aberdeen and doesn't relate to the English side of Chris, she belives it will turn her clean gyte like Andy from Cuddiestoun. Jean represents the Murdoch, Scottish side of Chris.

"So, that was Chris and her reading and schooling, two chrises that fought for her heart and tormented her."

"That was fine of father the guthrie whispered in her, but the Murdoch laughed with a blithe sweetness"

John Guthrie despises working the land and wants more for Chris, he offers to pay for her schooling but Jean thinks its 'dirt'.

"he glanced down just then and straight anf fair up into his eyes she looked, she nearly stumbled in the slow walk because of that looking"

Chris realises how attracted she is to Ewan at her fathers funeral 

"She was his and, he hers, for all things and everything, she never wanted better than that"

There realtionship was sealed the night of the storm when they run out to save the horses. The wedding is set for hogmanay symbolising a new start.

"he was close to her now and she held out her hands to him -- and went into the heart that was his forever"

Chris forgives Ewan after finding out the story from Chae. She imagines him whilst at the standing stones and accepts him into her heart once again but for forever. 

"the child in your heart died then"

"that died, and the Chris of books and the dreams died with it, or you folded them up in their paper of tissue and laid them away byt the dark, quiet corpse that was your childhood"

"But it scored her mind as a long drill scores the crumbling sods of a brown, still may"

Chris has a sexual encounter with the tink when he offers to prudley 'deflower' her to which Chris runs away but it stays with her as she realises herself as attractive and growing.

"thought of herself sweet and cool and fit for that lover who would some day come and kiss her and hold her, so"

Before death:

"a prayer prayed and answered, him dead at last"

After death:

"she wept softly for the father shed never helped and forgot to love"

"weeping then, stricken and frightened because of that knowledge that had come to her, she could never leave it, this life of toiling days and the needs of beasts"

Chris realises she cannot leave the land and does not want to purue a career in education.