"You're to stay home and help me boil tomorrow. Your sisters, too."
"Pa, I can't. I'll fall behind if I miss a day, and my examinations are coming up."
"Cows can't eat learning, Mattie. I need to buy hay. Used up most everything I cut last fall. Fred Becker don't take credit, so I'll need to sell some syrup to get it." I started to argue, but Pa looked up from his bowl and I knew to stop. (2.fractious.104-107)
Very early in the novel, Mattie must reconcile her hopes and dreams of an education with her father's expectations for her and his desire to see his farm succeed so that he can take care of his family. Duty versus dream comes up time and again, and in this case, duty wins.
My sisters scattered. Pa looked at me. "You couldn't tell me yourself?" he asked.
His eyes were hard and his voice was, too, and all the soft feelings I'd had for him only moments before swirled away like slop water down a drain.
"What for, Pa? So you could say no?"
He blinked at me and his eyes looked hurt, and I thought, just for a second, that he was going to say something tender to me, but no. "Go, then, Mattie. I won't stop you. But don't come back if you do," he said. Then he walked out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. (17.furtive.49-52)
Pa feels betrayed that his daughter wouldn't trust him with her dreams, but he also feels abandoned… especially after his wife abandoned him by dying and his son abandoned him by ditching life on the farm. Can we really blame him for his reaction? But then he gives Mattie the worst ultimatum ever: your dream or your family. It's really not a fair choice at all.
Pa looked at Royal, his shirt soaked with sweat, and my hands, dirty from the stones, and Pleasant unhitched, and put it all together. "I'm obliged to you," he said. "It's a son's work, planting. Not a daughter's. Thought I had a son to do it."
"Pa," I said quietly.
"Don't understand why he left. Couldn't tear me away from land like this," Royal said.
I bristled at that. I was angry at Lawton for leaving, too. But Royal was not family and therefore had no right to speak against him. (5.misnomer.49-52)
Family gets super complicated. Mattie doesn't like Pa speaking against her brother, and though she's upset with Lawton, too, when Royal disparages his choice, Mattie wants to defend her brother. It's usually like that with our own families. They might be idiots, but they're our idiots, and everyone else would be wise to watch their mouths.