How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #7
Why do I bother myself? Eh? [Alejandra] will go [to France]. Who am I? A father. A father is nothing. (2083)
Despite being Alejandra's father and the head of the ranch, Don Héctor here defers to Alfonsa's decision to send his daughter to France. The way he downplays his role as a father highlights both his inability to stop John and Alejandra's romance as well as Alfonsa's positional power within the family, adding another layer of complexity to the gender relations that confer small areas of control while setting in place severe restrictions for women of class in the novel's portrayal of Mexico.
Quote #8
To a boy [losing fingers on a hand] would have been an event of consequence. To a girl it was a devastation. I would not be seen in public. I even imagined I saw a change in my father toward me. That he could not help but view me as something disfigured. I thought it would now be assumed that I could not make a good marriage and perhaps it was so assumed. There was no longer even a finger on which to place the ring. I was treated with great delicacy. Perhaps like a person returned home from an institution. (3406)
This passage captures the harsh centrality of looks to how women like Alfonsa were positioned socially, as well as the slight cushion afforded her by her class status—her family status still required people to treat her with deference. That may not necessarily be the case for someone not born to a high station.
Quote #9
When I was born in this house it was already filled with books in five languages and since I knew that as a woman the world would be largely denied me I seized upon this other world. (3421)
Alfonsa's retreat into books here suggests that her intelligence and understanding come from being denied standing in the world, and perhaps offers a reason as to why she can be sympathetic to John yet ultimately will deny him in order to maintain what standing she and her niece have through their status. It is a precarious position, not unlike that of a bear on a unicycle.