How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Title.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I looked at him standing by the sink. He was washing his hands, splashing water on his face. My mamma left us. My brother, too. And now my feckless, reckless uncle had as well. My pa stayed, though. My pa always stayed.
I looked at him. And saw the sweat stains on his shirt. And his big, scarred hands. And his dirty, weary face. I remembered how, lying in my bed a few nights before, I had looked forward to showing him my uncle's money. To telling him I was leaving.
And I was so ashamed. (17.sesquipedalian.50-52)
Mattie depends on her uncle to give her the money necessary to go to Barnard College, but, like her mother and brother, he, too, abandons her. Only her father, who she doesn't really get along with, has remained. So the shame that Mattie feels is guilt for wanting to abandon her family like she has been abandoned, but also shame for treating her father and the responsibilities he's been forced to shoulder with scorn.
Quote #8
I saw her as she begged me never to go away, as she made me promise to stay and take care of her babies.
And I saw myself, tears in my eyes, promising her I would. (23.dehiscence.21-22)
Okay, this is the moment where we find out what the promise Mattie made to her mother is: to stay with her family and fulfill the responsibilities expected of the eldest girl on the farm. But we have to put the promise in context: Ellen is sick with cancer, not herself, and wracked with pain and grief. How could Mattie refuse her mother's request? And even more importantly, in what spirit did Mattie's mother make her request? Would she really want Mattie to give up her dream of college to stay on the farm? We kinda think she wouldn't.
Quote #9
"There's to be no more scribbling, no more foolishness. You're to come home and take up your duties and responsibilities. If you do, I promise I will do my best to forget any of this ever happened."
"I can't. You know I can't." (25.malediction.8-9)
Mattie overhears a conversation between Miss Wilcox and her husband through an open window; he insists on asserting his husbandly rights, but she refuses. We think it's because she thinks she has a duty to her craft of writing and to women who might want to follow in her steps. It might not seem like it at first, but Miss Wilcox is willing to sacrifice the safety and security of marriage—remember, we're in 1906—in the name of pursuing her dreams and helping change the world, one poem at a time.