How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I am a stranger in this church. Indeed, I have not been here since spring of 1692, so long ago now that it seems but a dim memory, and the girl I was at that time seems certainly like another person. Me and yet not me, that young girl. For she was as innocent to the dangers around her as my own baby daughter who now sleeps peacefully in my arms.
Another world it was back then, although most of us hereabouts live with some mark of the events of that time still upon us. (Prologue.2-3)
Geez—it's only the first few paragraphs of the book and already the past is looking pretty rocky for Susanna English. It sounds like Susanna has two ways of dealing with the past here. On the one hand, she feels like the spring of 1692 is super far away—just take a look at how she talks of her "young girl" self as totally different from her grown-up self. But on the other hand, Susanna carries the past around with her all the time—notice how she talks about the past as if it is a physical "mark."
Quote #2
Oh, if I had only known that day so long ago when I stood outside the parsonage in the cold, aching to belong to that circle of girls who did not want me.
[…]
I close my eyes and tremble with the memory. Wishing I could bring it back. Wishing. For I remember just how it was, and where I was standing and what I was feeling in that moment it was given to me to decide what to do. (Prologue.23, 25)
Sometimes Susanna sure is overcome by the past—her memories even have a physical effect on her, and she says they make her "tremble." What do you think makes these memories so powerful? And is this power a good thing or a bad thing?
Quote #3
Mama sighed. "Ann Putnam, senior, still blames people hereabouts for her sister's death. As well as for the babes she herself lost before she had little Ann."
"I didn't know she had children before Ann."
"A number. All dead. Like her older sister's. Instead of thanking the Lord she has Ann, she's made the child into a miniature of herself." (7.50-52)
Ann Putnam Sr. can't get over the past, and in some ways, we can't blame her—after all, she's had some super rough experiences. But her feelings about the past are causing some serious problems in present-day Salem.