How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
'You may be certain;' in the energy of her love [Louisa] took [Tom] to her bosom as if he were a child; 'that I will not reproach you. You may be certain that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I will save you at whatever cost. O Tom, have you nothing to tell me? Whisper very softly. Say only ''yes,'' and I shall understand you!' […] Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, crept out of bed, fastened his door, and threw himself upon his pillow again: tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully but impenitently spurning himself, and no less hatefully and unprofitably spurning all the good in the world. (2.8.75, 104)
Louisa and Tom are frequently transformed in the descriptive language from brother and sister to mother and son. Here she "takes him to her bosom as if he were a child" and he is "a boy" who ends up crying himself to sleep. What is sibling love like? What is maternal love like?
Quote #8
Mrs. Sparsit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and heard him then and there, within her (Mrs. Sparsit's) greedy hearing, tell her how he loved her, and how she was the stake for which he ardently desired to play away all that he had in life. The objects he had lately pursued, turned worthless beside her; such success as was almost in his grasp, he flung away from him like the dirt it was, compared with her. Its pursuit, nevertheless, if it kept him near her, or its renunciation if it took him from her, or flight if she shared it, or secrecy if she commanded it, or any fate, or every fate, all was alike to him, so that she was true to him, — the man who had seen how cast away she was, whom she had inspired at their first meeting with an admiration, an interest, of which he had thought himself incapable, whom she had received into her confidence, who was devoted to her and adored her. (2.11.56)
Mrs. Sparsit is a character who is completely shallow, and yet is a very good interpreter of surface behavior (just as she changes her own surface behavior to mimic whatever she wants to get across). Here, she watches Harthouse, another shallow person and good surface reader, act the part of a man in love to perfection. Is he more believable to her because she is so used to feelings being mimicked and acted out rather than honestly felt?
Quote #9
'I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me almost immediately, though I don't know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me. […] I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may be so. I don't know.' (2.12.36-41)
Harthouse wormed his way into her innermost secrets, but he is the only one who ever cared enough to do so. Underhanded or no, Louisa falls in love with him the same exact way that she married Bounderby – he's the only one who ever asked.