"It was not fair, she felt, to treat people as if they were finished beings. Everyone was always becoming and unbecoming."
Annabel is a story concerned with androgyny in a young child's life. Torn between the male expectations placed upon him and his own propensity toward the female, Wayne faces an internal identity crisis. Should people be judged according to who they are in the moment? Considering that all of life is one long train of developmental moments, no person can truly be seen as a finished product, yet people judge others as if they ought to have everything worked out for themselves already.
"Whenever she imagined her child, grown up without interference from a judgmental world, she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other, and as being secretly, almost magically powerful."
Wayne/Annabel's mother wants the best for her child, like most mothers. She envisions a future for him which allows him to feel comfortable in his own skin. In a world without the judgements or expectations of other people which pressure Wally to be a man, then he could embrace all aspects of his identity - especially including the feminine. His mom convinces herself that within the two halves of his gender identity he is somehow more complete than every other person, as if he possessed some sort of magical power within the balance of masculine and feminine.
"She waited the eternal instant that women wait when a horror jumps out at them. It is an instant that men do not use for waiting, an instant that opens a door to life or death. Women look through the opening because something might be alive in there."
Winter is concerned with the description of gender identity throughout the book. Is possessing a certain hormonal balance and a certain set of genitalia enough to place someone squarely within the binary system of gender or can they transcend the system? In this quotation one can see the impulses that differentiate between the masculine and feminine energies. When faced with a horrific threat, a man reacts instantly with a defensive response, but a woman will wait for one instant to see if maybe the threat itself is worth protecting. Innate within the feminine, is a desire to protect and nurture life, so even a threat will be received with an impulse to foster life.
"Wally Michelin had stomped through kindergarten and grades one and two with a certainty Wayne found fascinating. . . Wayne was in love with her from the moment he heard her crumbly voice. So in love he wished he could become her. If there was a way he could make himself into a ghost without a body -- a shadow -- or transparent like the lures his father used to catch Arctic char, he would have done it. He would have transformed into his father's lure, slipped under Wally Michelin's divinely freckled skin, and lived inside her, looking through her eyes."
Wayne is enamored by Wally with a selfless love. He loves her in a personally disassociated way, wanting to transpose his mind into her body so as to experience her better. In her body, would he realize that he loved her so completely for who she was or that he truly just loved her because she was a girl and he wanted to be one as well? Certainly Wayne envies her body, but does he still love her removed from the physical envy?
