How we cite our quotes: (Volume.Book.Chapter.Line)
Quote #1
There was a minute during which, though her eyes were fixed, she quite visibly lost herself in the thought of the way she might still pull things round had she only been a man." (1.1.1.3)
Early in the book, Kate thinks that she might have been able to save her family if she'd been a man. Had she been a man, she could have gotten a job and supported her family. Maybe she could have even kept her mom from dying. But in 1902, it was very difficult for a young woman to find a job that could support a family. Her father's desertion basically meant that the rest of them were doomed financially.
Quote #2
The hitch here, of course, was that, with whatever beauty, her sister, widowed and almost in want, with four bouncing children, was not a sensible value. (1.1.1.6)
D-bag Lionel Croy really has a thing about his daughters' "sensible value." Kate's poor sister Marian is a widow with four kids, but instead of feeling sympathy for her, Lionel considers her worthless. Marian's value as a woman is gone because it's unlikely that a rich guy is going to want to smooch/marry her.
Quote #3
She had seen the general show too early and too sharply, and she was so intelligent that she knew it and allowed for that misfortune; therefore when, in talk with him, she was violent and almost unfeminine, it was almost as if they had settled, for intercourse, on the short cut of the fantastic and the happy language of exaggeration. (1.2.1.23)
James' narrator suggests here that Kate was exposed to too many harsh social realities too early in her life. This has caused her to have a sharpness that the book describes as "unfeminine." Merton seems to tolerate this aspect of Kate's personality, but it doesn't make life any easier for him.