Mudbound

Laura gradually falls in love with Jamie, but she says it started the day he moved in and began complimenting her. She can tell that Jamie is always thinking about what might please her, a type of attention she never gets from Henry: “When I say that Jamie set about making me love him, I don’t mean he seduced me” (215). She explains that he liked to win people, and it was important to him to reassure himself that people loved him. If Henry knows that she is having sexual feelings for Jamie, he does not show it: “And that’s exactly what I was experiencing: sexual feelings, of an intensity I’d never experienced in my life” (217).

Jamie builds her an outdoor shower with a bucket and pulley when she is away in Greenville one weekend. Previously, she and her family only bathe once a week because of how much work it is to refill the bathtub every time. One evening when Laura had been on her period, Jamie found her in the kitchen in the middle of the night, washing herself to mitigate the smell that was bothering her. When she sees the shower, she tells him it is “the most marvelous thing [she has] ever seen” (219).