How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Title.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"I'm sorry, Miss Wilcox," I said, looking at the floor. "I don't mean to be coarse. I just ... I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay."
Miss Wilcox's eyes were still fixed on me, only now they were shiny. Like they were the day I got my letter from Barnard. "Make them care, Mattie," she said softly. "And don't you ever be sorry." (22.glean.82-83)
Mattie has just finished communicating to Miss Wilcox and her sister Lou that writers are liars and talking about how they need to be talking about topics closer to their readers' hearts. And Miss Wilcox pushes the importance of literature again: writing is meant to make people care about the common people. This interaction becomes more meaningful when we think about Miss Wilcox as Emily Baxter, revolutionary feminist poet.
Quote #8
Emily Baxter's poems made my head hurt. They made me think of so many questions and possibilities. Reading one was like pulling a stump. You got hold of a root and tugged, hoping it would come right up, but sometimes it went so deep and so far, you were halfway to the Loomis farm and still pulling. (23.dehiscence.10)
How is Mattie's reaction to Emily Baxter different from her reaction to other authors, like John Milton and Alexandre Dumas? Why might the realism of Baxter's writing appeal to Mattie more than the unrealistic stories she's read?
Quote #9
And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. (33.gravid.46)
Mattie, already a budding writer, has to wait until night and write with a smudgy pencil in a composition book by firelight. She knows the dedication that it takes to write, and she fears for her own writing ability if she has to pop out kids, run a house and farm, and cook.