I Never Promised You a Rose Garden Freedom and Confinement Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

It was Victorian, a little run-down, and surrounded by trees. Very good façade for a madhouse [...]. There were bars on all the windows. Deborah smiled slightly. It was fitting. Good. (1.21)

Deborah initially interprets her admittance to the mental hospital as a confinement, an imprisonment that she welcomes because now she'll be alone and able to retreat inward to Yr without as much intrusion from Earth.

Quote #2

To escape engulfment there was only the Here, with its ice-cold doctor and his notebook, or Yr with its golden meadows and gods. But Yr also held its regions of horror and lostness and she no longer knew to which kingdom in Yr there was passage. (2.2)

Deborah describes her longing to escape the real world here. The problem now is that even in Yr there are imperfections: the freedom Yr once gave her no longer exists. Even an invented world can't be perfect, because its creator isn't perfect; the real world and its problems seep in eventually.

Quote #3

Now, as by the laws of the world, her image walked around and answered and asked and acted; she, no longer Deborah, but a person bearing the appropriate name for a dweller on Yr's plains, sang and danced and recited the ritual songs to a caressing wind that blew on the long grasses. (2.8)

The Powers of Yr and its Falling God, Anterrabae, reward Deb for telling the truth of some events of her life to the first doctor who interviews her at the mental hospital. They do this by letting her roam the plains of Yr, oblivious to the real world, for two days. In Yr, Deborah doesn't have to be her messy self. She is free of the world and can escape for a little while.