“It was wonderful to be needed at her stage of life, especially by [Dick]. She was as in love with him as ever. That was what the bridge ladies didn’t know. Nor would they believe her if she made the claim. They spoke respectfully of their husbands, but she’d never had the sense that they’d experienced the passion that she felt. They even enjoyed being widows, whereas the prospect of that blighted state gave Polly a headache.”

Polly subservience to her husband, Dick, is evident in this quote. She feels guilty when she’s away from him because she’s unavailable to fulfill his constant requests. Polly deems this a loving relationship and seems unbothered by its lack of equality.

“[Dick had] lived a life of the mind. Though he was often at home, Polly had to plot to get his attention, but she chose to be cheerful rather than bitter about it. She’d wanted more, so much more, all that was possible between two people, but her galaxy of what could be ended up as a constellation of bright moments when they’d been intimate.”

This passage reveals that Dick doesn’t regard Polly as an equal and a partner but as secondary, as a helpmate. Polly enters marriage expecting to enjoy an exchange of ideas and feelings, but when her marriage doesn’t pan out that way, she lowers her expectations. Polly insists that she’s content with this compromise.

“[Agnes] could never live the lives her friends did, propping up silly men and caring about propriety and breaches of etiquette. Elspeth, too, had managed to escape Grace Lee’s Victorian hopes for her daughters by acting so much like a nun it wasn’t possible to conceive of her being with a man. So the Lee girls were to be spinsters. Free of men in close quarters.”

Reflecting with the theme of Women’s Opportunities and Choices, Agnes displays how she defies social norms by refusing to marry and birth children. She recognizes that not only do her life choices violate these norms, but they also violate her mother’s expectations and wishes. Agnes is unapologetic for this, however, and confidently lives the life she has chosen for herself as an author.