How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
They brought a chair on either side of me, and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so trustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a little while--I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself-- and then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how there must be a lapse of several years before this early love could come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution to do their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and perseverance, each always for the other's sake. Well! Richard said that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they called me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there, advising and talking, half the night. (13.100)
There is a lot of this odd setup, where Esther is somehow the middleman in the Ada-Richard relationship. She talks to Richard on Ada's behalf, brings his letters to her, and here she is literally sitting between them as they talk about their love for each other. What's the deal with that? Shmoop doesn't really get it; what do you think?
Quote #5
[Gridley] drew the hand Miss Flite held through her arm and brought her something nearer to him.
"This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken." (24.141-142)
The connection Gridley and Miss Flite form as two rejected Chancery suitors is rather sweet and moving. Platonic love between men and women is so rare in novels that it seems worth pointing out when it does occur.
Quote #6
"Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to come for you, my love?" said Mrs. Woodcourt. [...] "Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very worthy, much older--five and twenty years, perhaps--than yourself. And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy."
"That is a good fortune," said I. "But why is it to be mine?"
"My dear," she returned, "there's suitability in it--you are so busy, and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there's suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love, will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I shall."
It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night uncomfortable. [...] And after all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could not I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless things she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for I was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house, and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else? These were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account for. At least, if I could--but I shall come to all that by and by, and it is mere idleness to go on about it now. (30.30-37)
What do you make of Esther's weirdly hiding the fact that she and Woodcourt had feelings for each other at this point? Especially since she's writing from a future in which they've been married for seven years and have two kids? Does that long passage about Mrs. Woodcourt's opinions of her sound a little too coy? Shmoop is smelling some kind of narrative rat here, but it's hard to say exactly what it might be.