In the girl’s scrunched face Evelyn saw the entire path: pigtails, dollhouse, riding lessons, foxtrot, engagement, white dress, all in service of the repetition of this very same moment. Another perfectly wasted life.
-- Narrator (Chapter 2: 1965)

Importance: This passage encapsulates Evelyn’s derisive standpoint towards the conventional tokens of femininity, including upper-class accomplishments, marriage, and children. By typecasting the newborn Fern as a “waste,” and never encouraging her to step beyond the bounds of this prescribed life, Evelyn ends up pushing her daughter towards this restrictive path. Fern will battle for and against these expectations throughout her life, and her character trajectory in the novel in part attempts to find a balance between the roles of wife and mother assigned to her at birth by society and Evelyn, and other possibilities to learn and grow beyond the home.

For people like these, people who lived aside from the scramble and burn of work...
-- Narrator (Chapter 2: 1965 paragraph 5)