"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.
There was a bill of sale on top of it, and money—a dirty, wrinkled bill. Ten dollars. For twelve gallons of maple syrup. I knew he'd been hoping for twenty.
I looked at him then. He looked tired. So tired. And worn and old.
"Mattie… Mattie, I'm sorry… I didn't mean to… ," he said, reaching for me.
I shook him off. "Never mind, Pa. Go to bed. We've got the upper field to plow tomorrow." (10.plaintive.14-17)
Pa's drunk here and has earned less money than he expected he would for the syrup he's made. Which is why he hits Mattie when he finds out she's earned money and hasn't shared it with the family. So we've got the trouble that lack of money can bring a family, combined with the responsibility Pa has to shoulder raising four girls without a wife, and Maggie recognizes how much of a toll this takes on him. It's pretty generous of her.
He lifted my bag down, walked me to the kitchen door, and peered inside. I waited for him to hand me the carpetbag, but he didn't. He held it hard against him. "Well, you going in or not?" he asked me.
"I need my bag, Pa."
As he handed it to me, I saw he'd gripped it so tightly his knuckles had turned white. We were not the kissing kind, me and Pa, but I wished that maybe he would at least hug me good-bye. (29.icosahedron.23-25)
Like many families, Mattie and her Pa have difficulty communicating. That's okay, though, because their emotions are pretty clear here: Pa wants to protect Mattie from the world and is having a hard time letting her go. (Um, the carpetbag is a pretty clear symbol for Mattie here.)
"Lawton does. Said it was my fault. That I killed her with hard work. Said I should have moved us all to Inlet and worked in the sawmill. Said I killed your mother and I wasn't going to kill him." And then his face crumpled and he sobbed like a child. "I didn't kill her; I loved her..." (35.aby.75)
Pa is virtually incoherent in his illness, but he reveals the guilt and sorrow he feels about his wife's death and his son's abandonment. This guilt takes a huge toll on not just him, but his four daughters as well. The strength of emotion is almost too much for him to bear.