How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph) or (Part.Paragraph)
Quote #7
And though it horrified her, it was another entry, a moment of coming into being, another first: to be hated by an adult. Children hated generously, capriciously. It hardly mattered. But to be the object of adult hatred was an initiation into a solemn new world. It was promotion. (1.13.3)
This is after Briony has interrupted Robbie and Cecilia in the library, but before she's falsely accused him of rape. So he doesn't actually hate her yet; he just thinks she's annoying. It's almost like wanting him to hate her makes him hate her, though. Imagining it makes it so, sort of. (See also the "Dreams, Hopes, and Plans" theme.)
Quote #8
Poor vain and vulnerable Lola, with the pearl-studded choker and the rosewater scent, who longed to throw off the last restraints of childhood, who saved herself from humiliation by falling in love, or persuading herself she had, and who could not believe her luck when Briony insisted on doing the talking and blaming. And what luck that was for Lola—barely more than a child, prized open and taken—to marry her rapist. (3.260)
What "humiliation" is Lola saved from exactly? We think the humiliation might have to do with old-fashioned ideas about female purity and the idea that a woman who wasn't a virgin wasn't marriage material. What do you think? It's hard to say for sure, because remember that we're only getting Briony's impression of what Lola thinks. In a lot of ways, the choices Lola makes on her way to growing up remain a mystery.
Quote #9
"Do you think I assaulted your cousin?"
"No."
"Did you think it then?
She fumbled her words. "Yes, yes and no. I wasn't certain."
"And what's made you so certain now?
She hesitated, conscious that in answering she would be offering a form of defense, a rationale, and that it might enrage him further.
"Growing up." […]
She had been right to be wary. He was gripped by a kind of anger that passes itself off as wonderment.
"Growing up," he echoed. When he raised his voice she jumped. "Goddamnit! You're eighteen. How much growing up do you need to do? There are soldiers dying in the field at eighteen. Old enough to be left to die on the roads. Did you know that?"
"Yes." (3.405-415)
Robbie intends this to mean that if soldiers are old enough to die at eighteen, then Briony is past old enough to take responsibility for her actions. It does raise the question though—should 18-year-olds really be sent off to war? Briony maybe makes the soldiers seem too young, rather than the other way round.