How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Goodness me!" exclaimed the woman, relieved. "One would think the house was afire." She replaced the glass and waited a moment before turning up the wick. A pale shadow was seen floating vaguely on the floor. (1.69)
Even before Elizabeth admits to herself/the reader that she's worried about her husband, she seems mighty jumpy. In this moment, she seems unduly startled when her daughter gets excited about the flowers Elizabeth has in her apron.
Quote #2
While for an hour or more the children played, subduedly intent, fertile of imagination, united in fear of the mother's wrath, and in dread of their father's home-coming, Mrs Bates sat in her rocking-chair making a "singlet" of thick cream-coloured flannel, which gave a dull wounded sound as she tore off the grey edge. (1.80)
The tension is palpable here. Even though the children are playing, they are also apparently nervous, making a concerted effort not to tick their mom off. Of course, we know their mother is a bit jumpy as well . . .
Quote #3
When Mrs Bates came down, the room was strangely empty, with a tension of expectancy. She took up her sewing and stitched for some time without raising her head. Meantime her anger was tinged with fear. (1.90)
After putting her kids to bed, Elizabeth tries to get back to sewing. Whereas her prevailing emotion toward the beginning of the story seemed to be anger, the narrator admits here that she's feeling fear as well.
Quote #4
She hurried along the edge of the track, then, crossing the converging lines, came to the stile by the white gates, whence she emerged on the road. Then the fear which had led her shrank. People were walking up to New Brinsley; she saw the lights in the houses; twenty yards further on were the broad windows of the "Prince of Wales," very warm and bright, and the loud voices of men could be heard distinctly. What a fool she had been to imagine that anything had happened to him! He was merely drinking over there at the "Prince of Wales." She faltered. She had never yet been to fetch him, and she never would go. (2.2)
At this moment, Elizabeth has given into her fear enough to go out looking for her husband, but now she's having second thoughts, chastising herself for being a "fool" to believe anything had happened to him. Little does she know…
Quote #5
When they arose, saw him lying in the naïve dignity of death, the women stood arrested in fear and respect. (2.118)
Once the worst has been confirmed—Walter's death has been discovered, and men have brought his body back to the house—the fearful mood intensifies rather than tapering off.
Quote #6
She was afraid with a bottomless fear, so she ministered to him. (2.121)
Elizabeth has a lot of reasons to be even more afraid now that Walter is dead. For one, she's pregnant and has two other kids, so there's that. Also, he's given her a glimpse into the great void that death can represent. Tragically, to her, it's not even that his death represents the end of their relationship so much as it shows her that their entire relationship was a lie. "Bottomless fear" sounds about right for dealing with all that; though we here at Shmoop prefer to think of "bottomless fries" when times get tough.
Quote #7
"Bless him," whispered his mother, looking always at his face, and speaking out of sheer terror. "Dear lad—bless him!" She spoke in a faint, sibilant ecstasy of fear and mother love. (2.124)
Apparently Walter's mother is experiencing intense fear as well, but we don't really learn much about the nature of her feelings (as compared to Elizabeth's), but that's mostly just because the mother in law isn't our protagonist.
Quote #8
Elizabeth looked up. The man's mouth was fallen back, slightly open under the cover of the moustache. The eyes, half shut, did not show glazed in the obscurity. Life with its smoky burning gone from him, had left him apart and utterly alien to her. And she knew what a stranger he was to her. In her womb was ice of fear, because of this separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh. (2.128)
The feeling that Walter was a stranger to her multiplies Elizabeth's anxieties in the wake of her husband's death, converting the child inside her—a companion/family member who is literally built into her flesh—into a stranger, in her eyes. So much for motherly love.
Quote #9
And her soul died in her for fear: she knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met nor whom they fought. (2.128)
The supposed realization that she never knew her husband inspires a lot of emotions, and fear is one of them. It might seem odd at first, but think about it—what if you suddenly felt like you didn't know the person who was supposed to be your soul mate at all?
Quote #10
A terrible dread gripped her all the while: that he could be so heavy and utterly inert, unresponsive, apart. The horror of the distance between them was almost too much for her—it was so infinite a gap she must look across. (2.133)
As we've mentioned elsewhere, Walter's death has made Elizabeth feel so incredibly separate from her husband/everything else that she is kind of paralyzed with terror. Apparently the great beyond is no laughing matter . . .