She could see it plainly: her father lying prostrate, too weak to do more than sip broth; odd-smelling strangers stomping in and out of their house at all hours; she and her sisters slaving at the stove and the hearths and the sink, swatting away flies in summer heat, lining their shoes with rags in the winter, their lives every bit as miserable as those she’d seen that day at the tenement, their futures as insecure as the dead girl’s sister’s must be now. No decent man would have any of the Smith girls, and they’d all get some kind of pox or grippe and die ignominiously, four spinsters whose mother had once declared they would be duchesses or marchionesses, or ladies of the peerage at the very least.
-- Alva (chapter 2)

Importance: This quote represents the burden that Alva bears in being responsible for her family's financial health. Alva...