How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
it was as though she was searching for something she wanted, needed—must have, more than life itself, and which had been taken from her. (5.24)
You know those people who feel like life has done them wrong, even though life doesn't exactly have a consciousness or will to do individual people wrong? Yeah. That's Jennet. And people who feel betrayed by life always find a way to take it out on the world.
Quote #2
In Scotland, a son was born to her and she wrote of him with a desperate, clinging affection. (9.35)
Jennet was once a normal human, even a fond and affectionate mother. And now look at what she's become. Hint: it's not pretty.
Quote #3
…when they began again it was at first in passionate outrage and protest, later, in quiet, resigned bitterness. Pressure was being exerted upon her to give up the child for adoption… (9.35)
How could you not feel betrayed if your own family was conspiring to snatch your child from your arms? Sure, Jennet's got a reason to be mad. But maybe not so much at Arthur, who wasn't even alive yet when all the craziness went down.
Quote #4
But the feelings that must accompany the death of someone as close to my heart and bound up with my own being as it was possible to be, I knew then, in the nursery of Eel Marsh House. (11.19)
It's not just betrayal that's made the woman in black the way she it. It's actual heartbreak. Sure, the accident was no one's fault—but she's desperate to blame anyone, and so she blames her entire community.
Quote #5
But it seemed most likely that only a blood relation would have given, or rather, been forced to give her illegitimate child for adoption to another woman… (11.64)
Arthur figures out that Jennet's family betrayed her: the people she loved wouldn't let her keep her child. That's got to sting. (Or worse.)
Quote #6
Her passionate love for her child and her isolation with it, her anger and the way she at first fought bitterly against and finally, gave despairingly in to the course proposed to her, filled me with sadness and sympathy. (11.65)
Jennet thought that giving up her kid was the right course of action, so of course she feels utterly betrayed when he dies through what she considers negligence. We're pretty sure the phrase "grizzly mom" was invented for just this reason.
Quote #7
It was for Jennet Eliza Humfrye, spinster, aged thirty-six years. The cause of death was given simply as "heart failure." (11.69)
"Heart failure" probably means that Jennet was so angry and crazed with grief that her body couldn't take it anymore. (It actually happens.)
Quote #8
She was not welcome at her parents' house and the man—the child's father—had gone abroad for good. (11.105)
Jennet was pretty much tossed out by everyone in her life. Her parents kick her out; her baby daddy flees the country; she has to stand by and watch another woman raise her son ... and then let him die. We're actually starting to feel sorry for her.
Quote #9
But Jennet was so distressed that she threatened violence and in the very end the sister relented—just so far… (11.106)
Even among her own family, Jennet has to beg and plead to see her child, and she doesn't even get to tell him who she is. (For those of you keeping track, this sounds a lot like part of the plotline in the Victorian sensation fiction classic East Lynne.)
Quote #10
When she went about the streets, people drew back. Children were terrified of her. She died eventually. She died in hatred and misery. (11.115)
Jennet gets no sympathy while she's alive, and so she shows no kindness to others when she does die and comes back to haunt the town. To her, that's not betrayal of the town—they're just getting what they deserve.