How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them (1).
Hester is described as a woman who is dissatisfied with all the traditional feminine roles.
Quote #2
She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find anything successful. The failure made deep lines come into her face. (4)
Frustrated with her husband's inability to provide for her luxurious tastes, Hester tries to take over and earn some money too—but she isn't very successful at trying to fill her husband's shoes.
Quote #3
"[…] And aren't you lucky, Mother?"
"I can't be, if I married an unlucky husband." (26-7)
Hester defines herself in relation to her husband. As a married woman and a mother, she has few options.
Quote #4
When the two girls were playing dolls, he would sit on his big rocking horse, charging madly into space, with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily. (41)
The children are already being prepared for their adult gender roles: The girls for motherhood and the boy for manly ventures.
Quote #5
"Aren't you growing too big for a rocking horse? You're not a very little boy any longer, you know." (50)
Hester seems anxious to get Paul to grow up already.
Quote #6
She so wanted to be first in something, and she did not succeed, even in making sketches for drapery advertisements. (170)
Hester is again unable to succeed at a career.
Quote #7
There were certain new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his father's school, in the following autumn. (181)
Paul is being prepared for manhood, following in his father's gentlemanly footsteps.
Quote #8
Since he was emancipated from a nurse and a nursery governess, he had had his rocking horse removed to his own bedroom at the top of the house. (203)
Paul refuses to grow up, and secretly holds on to his rocking horse.
Quote #9
"Surely, you're too big for a rocking horse!" his mother had remonstrated.
"Well, you see, Mother, till I can have a real horse, I like to have some sort of animal about." (204-5)
Paul deflects his mother's concerns by making the rocking horse appear as a substitute for the real horse that he will have as an adult.