Directions: Read each quote carefully. Choose 3 of the quotes below and determine the situation of the excerpt and write a thoughtful response discussing the significance of the passage and its relationship to the rest of the work.
1.“‘You are burnt beyond recognition,’ he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage. She held up her hands, strong, shapely hands, and surveyed them critically, drawing up her lawn sleeves above the wrists. Looking at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband before leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he, understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped them into her open palm.” (Ch. 1)
2.“In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle.” (Ch. 4)
3.“Her glance wandered from his face away toward the Gulf, whose sonorous murmur reached her like a loving but imperative treaty.” (Ch. 5)
4.“A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her – the light which, showing the way, forbids it.” (Ch. 6)
5.“At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life – the outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.” (Ch. 7)
6.“Edna was what she herself called very fond of music. Musical strains, well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind. She sometimes liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played or practiced. One piece which that lady played Edna had entitled ‘Solitude.’. . . When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him.” (Ch. 9)
7.“She heard him moving about the room; every sound indicating impatience and irritation. Another time she would have gone in at his request. She would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with any sense of submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life which has been portioned out to us.” (Ch. 11)
8.“She completely abandoned her Tuesdays at home, and did not return the visits of those who had called upon her.” (Ch. 19)
9. “The pigeon-house pleased her. It at once assumed the intimate character of a home, while she herself invested it with a charm which it reflected like a warm glow. There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual.” (Ch. 32)
10. “You have been a very, very, foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, ‘Here, Robert, take her and be happy, she is yours,’ I should laugh at you both.” (Ch. 36)
11. “The children appeared before her like antagonists who sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest of her days. But she knew a way to elude them. She was not thinking of these things when she walked down to the beach.” (Ch. 39)
