How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Clarissa pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion. (1.3).
The novel's first chapter leaves no question about Clarissa Vaughan's love for her city. Her townhouse apartment in New York City's West Village is "home" in every sense of the word, and so are the streets and shops that sit waiting beyond her doorstep.
Quote #2
When she is finished in the bathroom she descends into the dusky morning quiet of the hall. She wears her pale blue housecoat. Night still resides here. Hogarth House is always nocturnal, even with its chaos of papers and books, its bright hassocks and Persian rugs. It is not dark in itself but it seems to be illuminated against darkness, even as the wan, early sun shines between the curtains and cars and carriages rumble by on Paradise Road. (2.6)
The contrast between light and darkness that Michael Cunningham creates in this passage is pretty striking, and it's worth pausing over this description. Exactly what does it mean to say that the house is "nocturnal," but "is not dark in itself"? What kind of atmosphere are we meant to imagine here?
Quote #3
She brushes her teeth, brushes her hair, and starts downstairs. She pauses several treads from the bottom, listening, waiting; she is again possessed (it seems to be getting worse) by a dreamlike feeling, as if she is standing in the wings, about to go onstage and perform in a play for which she is not appropriately dressed, and for which she has not adequately rehearsed. What, she wonders, is wrong with her. This is her husband in the kitchen; this is her little boy. (3.17)
For Laura Brown, fulfilling her roles as wife, mother, and suburban homemaker feels like performing a part in a play. Both her home and her home life seem deeply uncanny to her, and she doesn't really know why.