How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
[...] I worked or looked for work and for Emily's father, who "could no longer endure" (he wrote in his good-bye note) "sharing want with us." (8)
When Emily's father leaves, the narrator is placed in the difficult position of a single working mother.
Quote #2
I was nineteen. It was the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression. (9)
This quote helps set up the historical context for the story. It opens during the Great Depression, before President Franklin D. Roosevelt had set up work-relief institutions, like the Works Progress Administration (WPA). From this quote we know that times were tough for everyone, but probably more so for a single mother, since not many women were in the workforce in the 1930s.
Quote #3
But it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her. It took a long time to raise money for her fare back (11)
Poverty breaks up the family, as the narrator has to leave Emily in the care of her father's family. There's a high price to pay for keeping a family together.
Quote #4
Old enough for nursery school they said, and I did not know then what I know now [...] the lacerations of group life in nurseries that are only parking places for children. Except that it would have made no difference if I had known. (13)
The narrator is put in the heartbreaking position of having to put her young daughter in the only daycare she can afford. Keep in mind that this story is set at a time when most women didn't work outside the home, and therefore it was common for women to be full-time stay-at-home moms.
Quote #5
"Not To Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical Affection." (28)
This is how the mother interprets the strict rules at the convalescent home. Parental affection can "contaminate," as if it were some kind of disease. Given that all the children are from lower-income families, perhaps the disease is poverty.
Quote #6
"We simply do not have room for children to keep any personal possessions." (39)
The charitable convalescent home where Emily goes to recover from the measles is really like those awful Victorian orphanages described in the novels of Charles Dickens. Or the orphanage in the musical Annie.
Quote #7
You ought to do something about her with a gift like that – but without money or knowing how, what does one do? (49)
The fact that Emily has an amazing gift that may never be actualized brings up the sobering thought that there are countless young men and women with promise but no opportunity to realize their dreams.
Quote #8
My wisdom came too late. She has much to her and probably nothing will come of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear. (55)
The narrator seems to end on a note of despair, but the story also gives us Emily's light-hearted banter, leaving open the possibility that Emily just might be able to transcend the circumstances of her early childhood, in a time "of depression, of war, of fear." (Compare this quote to the last quote under the theme "Power.")