Necessity of male/female interaction

In late chapter 3, Maryam makes an interesting argument against the need for women to avert their gaze when interacting with men. She says that if she is well acquainted with said male, that he is respectable, and that the intentions of the woman are pure, then there should be no need for the woman to look down when addressing him. To this, her effective "teacher" argues that even the wives of the Prophet were told to avert their gaze, to which Maryam argues that the Quran also says that characteristics/rules that are applied to the Prophet and his kin should not be directly applied to the Muslims of the world, and so the vast majority of women in Muslim history are not affected.
So, the bigger idea here is the contextualization of all inter sexual interaction. Generalizations cannot be made based on single verses in the Quran; every situation has to be taken on a case by case basis. The ability of people, especially women such as Maryam, to make arguments such as this in a culture that often promotes the submission of females to their male counterparts, or to the everyday interactions that are had with them, is promising when looking forward to the progression of the Muslim faith, and its interpretation of Quranic verse.