Odour of Chrysanthemums Marriage Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #7

And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing. For she had been wrong. She had said he was something he was not; she had felt familiar with him. Whereas he was apart all the while, living as she never lived, feeling as she never felt. (2.128)

Because she never really knew her husband (in her view), Elizabeth seems to feel like she has done him wrong, saying she had "said he was something he was not." It seems like she's feeling guilty about this mistake, but hey—hindsight is always 20/20.

Quote #8

And he was the father of her children. Her soul was torn from her body and stood apart. She looked at his naked body and was ashamed, as if she had denied it. After all, it was itself. It seemed awful to her. She looked at his face, and she turned her own face to the wall. For his look was other than hers, his way was not her way. She had denied him what he was—she saw it now. She had refused him as himself. —And this had been her life, and his life. (2.129)

Here, we learn it's not just regret that haunts Elizabeth now that she believes she failed to see her husband for who he really was—she actually seems to feel ashamed.

Quote #9

He and she were only channels through which life had flowed to issue in the children. She was a mother—but how awful she knew it now to have been a wife. And he, dead now, how awful he must have felt it to be a husband. (2.130)

Continuing with Elizabeth's monologue of regrets about her married life, we learn that she outright finds it to have been "awful . . . to have been a wife." It seems she still feels she can function as a mom, but the wife gig did not work, in her view.