How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released. (4.5.5)
Well, the narrator definitely thinks Marie is constrained by her role as a woman. Marie is pictured here thinking about her future, watching herself and her desire to thrive slowly waste away, as she remains stuck to her "chain"—Frank, of course.