How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Page)
Quote #7
After Joseph and I got married, all through the first year I had suicidal thoughts. Some nights I woke up in a cold sweat wondering if my mother's anxiety was somehow hereditary or if it was something that I had "caught" from living with her. (29.193)
Sophie feels great empathy for her mother and is extremely sensitive to the trauma that she suffered as a young girl. She feels this so deeply that she has taken on the trauma herself, absorbing Martine's memories like they are her own. It's no wonder that she feels this anxiety is inherited or "catching." She begins to understand that they really aren't when she observes her peaceful daughter, who is able to sleep on a dime and shows no signs of such anxiety. Ultimately, Sophie knows that it is up to her to break the cycle of stress and trauma for her daughter.
Quote #8
I was holding her and fighting off that man, keeping those images out of her head. I was telling her that it was all right. That it was not a demon in her stomach, that it was a child, like I was once a child in her body. I was telling her that I would never let anyone put her away in a mental hospital, that I would take care of her. (30.200)
Sophie wants the impossible here: she wants to separate from her body (which is in bed with her husband) and reach out to her mother who is suffering, several states away. She wants magically to make everything all right for Martine, and to promise that she will keep all bad things away from her mother. It's a lot of wish fulfillment all at once, and is sparked by her desire to escape from a sexual relationship with her husband. But Sophie learns that she can't help her mother with things that Martine will not face—and that she might be walking the same path, if she doesn't face up and tackle her problems head on.
Quote #9
"Everywhere I go, I hear it. I hear him saying things to me. You tintin, malpròp. He calls me a filthy whore. I never want to see this child's face. Your child looks like Manman. This child, I will never look into its face." (33.217)
Martine has descended completely into paranoid fantasy here. She tells Sophie that the child she is carrying is a boy (she knows because she hears him speaking to her in a man's voice). Clearly, the voice that Martine hears is more likely to be her own self-condemnation, or perhaps what she thinks others might say of her. This is a serious and tragic development, but one that Sophie doesn't know how to deal with. She assumes that her mother will be better once she has the abortion, but doesn't understand how severely Martine's judgment has been affected.