How we cite our quotes:
Quote #4
“Be quiet, girl! It is time you understood one thing at the start. This will be your home, since you have no other, but you will fit yourself to our ways and do no more to interrupt the work of the household or to turn the heads of my daughter with your vanity.” (4.49)
Uncle Matthew has a conniption fit when he finds his daughters and wife playing dress up in Kit’s fancy clothes. Through this culture clash, we learn that if Kit is to call New England her home, she will have to conform to the values of the Puritan family.
Quote #5
Mercy certainly did not consider herself afflicted. She did a full day’s work and more. Moreover, Kit has soon discovered that Mercy was the pivot about whom the whole household moved. She coaxed her father out of his bitter moods, upheld her timorous and anxious mother, gently restrained her rebellious sister and had reached to draw an uncertain alien into the circle. (6.30)
Mercy is the center of the household.
Quote #6
“Mother has never told you much about our family, has she?” she went on. “You see, there was a boy, their first child, two years older than I. I barely remember him. We both caught some kind of fever. I got well, except for this leg, but he died.”
“I didn’t know,” whispered Kit, stricken. “Poor Aunt Rachel!”
“There was another boy, after Judith,” Mercy continued. “He lived only a week. Mother said it was the will of God, but sometimes I’ve wondered.” (8.45-47)
Mercy gives the family’s history to Kit. We learn that all of the boy sons have died and this is the reason the family had wished Kit was a boy.