How we cite our quotes:
Quote #4
“Be quiet, girl! It is time you understood one thing at the start. This will be your home, since you have no other, but you will fit yourself to our ways and do no more to interrupt the work of the household or to turn the heads of my daughter with your vanity.” (4.49)
Uncle Matthew, a stern Puritan, has a fit when he finds his daughters and wife playing dress up in Kit’s fancy aristocratic dresses. Through this culture clash, we learn that, if Kit is to call New England her home, she will have to conform to the values of the Puritan Wood family.
Quote #5
As they came out from the shelter of the trees and the Great Meadows stretched before them, Kit caught her breath. She had not expected anything like this. From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own. As far as she could see they stretched on either side, a great level sea of green, broken here and there by a solitary graceful elm. Was it the fields of sugar cane they brought to mind, or the endless reach of the ocean to meet the sky? Or was it simply the sense of freedom and space and light that spoke to her of home? (8.7)
The Meadows remind Kit of her home back in Barbados. The place will become a home, of sorts, for Kit. The Meadows are a place for quietness, but also of friendship. Who does Kit meet in the Meadows?
Quote #6
If only I could be here alone, without Judith or anyone, she thought with longing. Someday I am going to come back to this place, when there is time just to stand still and look at it. How often she would come back she had no way of foreseeing, nor could she know that never, in the months to come, would the Meadows break the promise they held for her at this moment, a promise of peace and quietness and of comfort for a troubled heart. (8.8)
While the Meadows are an isolated place where almost no one lives, Kit finds comfort in the solitude. We learn through the narrator’s foreshadowing that the Meadows will always offer Kit refuge. How do the Meadows become important to Kit?