How we cite our quotes: Volume.Part.Chapter.Paragraph
Quote #7
"I can never claim my release from my engagement," she went on. "Whatever way it ends, it must end wretchedly for me. All I can do, Marian, is not to add the remembrance that I have broken my promise and forgotten my father's dying words, to make that wretchedness worse." (1.3.1.12)
Laura's stubborn passivity gets out of control here. Even Marian is frustrated with her refusal to get herself out of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad situation. Laura here sort of takes a woman's helpless position to freakish extremes, which may be a form of social commentary on Collins's part.
Quote #8
Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats, for life, I must respect the housekeeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way. (2.1.1.10)
We love Marian's sarcastic tone. She's clearly sick of having women considered to be "nothing," and she's sick of petticoats and patience, to boot.
Quote #9
I shall relate both narratives, not in the words (often interrupted, often inevitably confused) of the speakers themselves, but in the words of the brief, plain, studiously simple abstract which I committed to writing for my own guidance, and for the guidance of my legal adviser. So the tangled web will be most speedily and intelligibly unrolled. (3.1.2.2)
The fact that Walter narrates Laura's and Marian's traumatic, post-Blackwater Park stories for them is hugely important thematically. The two women are forced to rely on a man to tell their stories, a man who has the power to reinterpret them to make them more "intelligible." Telling your own story is a form of power in this novel, so having a man intervene on behalf of two women sets off all sorts of alarms.