Quote 4
"She was a novelist," said Lucy craftily. The remark was a happy one, for nothing roused Mrs. Honeychurch so much as literature in the hands of females. She would abandon every topic to inveigh against those women who (instead of minding their houses and their children) seek notoriety by print. Her attitude was: “If books must be written, let them be written by men”; and she it at great length, while Cecil yawned and Freddy played at "This year, next year, now, never," with his plum-stones, and Lucy artfully fed the flames of her mother's wrath (13.14).
Despite the fact that Mrs. Honeychurch is an adorable, lovable, and generally charming character, she is firmly rooted in the old-fashioned world that holds Lucy back. Her opinion on female authors demonstrates that she totally believes, without malice, in the pre-assigned traditional roles of men and women.
Quote 5
"If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting both for us and for her" (3.5).
Indeed it would, Mr. Beebe! The clergyman, wittily observant as always, poses a certain challenge to Lucy here; we see the results emerge in the rest of the book, as Lucy struggles to bring the intensity of feeling that show up in her music to the forefront of her real life.
Quote 6
“You despise my mother—I know you do—because she's conventional and bothers over puddings; but, oh goodness!"—she rose to her feet—"conventional, Cecil, you're that, for you may understand beautiful things, but you don't know how to use them; and you wrap yourself up in art and books and music, and would try to wrap up me. I won't be stifled, not by the most glorious music, for people are more glorious, and you hide them from me. That's why I break off my engagement. You were all right as long as you kept to things, but when you came to people—" She stopped (17.8).
Here, Lucy finally calls Cecil out on his obnoxious and profoundly antisocial habit of thinking of everything – people, relationships, basically the entire human world – in terms of stuffy art history. By treating everyone and everything around him as objects (whether as works of art or worthless junk), he fails to understand the deeper, incredibly human feelings that Lucy possesses.