How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Infandum, Regina, jubes renovare dolorem. Troy in flames, seven years of exile, thirteen good ships lost. What is to come out of it? (4.1.20)
Say what? That first part's Latin, from the famous epic poem the Aeneid by Virgil, which tells the story of Aeneas, the founding father of the Romans. Anyway, translation: Great Queen, what you command me to relate, renews the sad remembrance of our fate. It's when Queen Dido makes Aeneas tell her about the fall of Troy, a memory that is painful for him to recall. The Baroness identifies with that past-induced pain.
Quote #8
Whenever I was ill in Africa, or much worried, I suffered from a special kind of compulsive idea. It seemed to me then that all my surroundings were in danger or distress, and that in the midst of this disaster I myself was somehow on the wrong side, and therefore was regarded with distrust and fear by everybody.
This nightmare was in reality a reminiscence of the time of the war. (5.3.27)
It is interesting that the memory, or reminiscence, of World War I, which was pretty rough for the Baroness because she was always either being accused of being a German sympathizer or threatened with the possibility of being sent to a ladies' concentration camp for her own protection, would come back when she is sick or worried. The past is like a latent disease that rears its ugly head when her defenses are low.
Quote #9
I lay in bed and thought of the events of the last months, I tried to understand what it really was that had happened. It seemed to me that I must have, in some way, got out of the normal course of human existence, into a maelstrom where I ought never to have been. (5.4.19)
For the Baroness, looking back into the past, into her memory, is confusing and painful. She's faced with the deaths of loved ones and the loss of her home, but the present doesn't seem to have any connection with the past. In a way, the very book we're reading might be her way of going back and trying "to understand what it really was that had happened."