How we cite our quotes: (Story.Section.Paragraph) or (Story.Paragraph)
Quote #7
An educational project into which she'd poured much of her time, energy and considerable talent was declared "superfluous and romantic" by Washington, and summarily killed; Irene began to long for every amenity the small, dusty Southern town she worked in did not offer. (Source.1)
Irene finds herself in a sad, sad place: her ambitious literacy program gets axed before it even has time to get off the ground. But it seems that she's more miffed that her efforts have been thwarted than that the women's ambitions have been cut short. Her ability to run away to San Francisco also highlights a major difference between herself and her students—she's able to quell her dissatisfaction by shaking the dust of that poor Southern town off her feet.
Quote #8
It was the kind of shrug Irene was seeing a lot. There was…dissatisfaction in it; there was also acceptance. Missing—and suddenly, it seemed to Irene—was defiance. (Source.18)
Anastasia has just told Irene that her full pantry is courtesy of public assistance. She doesn't seem to feel as wounded in her pride about it as Irene thinks she should. Part of it, Irene knows, is that poverty has a way of sucking defiance out of people. That's not really an issue in Anastasia's case—her parents can support her. But she has given in to the feeling that she has lost control over her life.
Quote #9
They doubted their own personal histories and their own experience. The food […] was bad. Bologna and pork and beans and yellow, wilted slices of lettuce. Oversweetened lemonade that attracted mosquitoes. And there was the smell of clean poverty, an odor Irene wished would disappear from this world, a sharp, bitter odor, almost acrid, as if the women washed themselves in chemicals. (Source.24)
Irene recalls the less-than-ideal atmosphere of her adult literacy class. It was a hard experience for her since she had to deal with a lot of misery on a micro-level (crummy, half-rotted food, for instance). But she's dealing from the outside. At the end of the day, she can handle her fatigue by simply going away.