Everything I Never Told You

Without knowing what section you are referring to, I will give you a general answer.

Central to Marilyn's character is her struggle to define herself in her own terms and not in relation to other people. Early on in her life she rejects the homemaker career her mother endorses and studies physics and science to pursue a career in medicine.

At Harvard's Radcliffe College Marilyn finds herself the sole woman in rooms filled with men and sexist male professors who belittle her intelligence and aptitude. Undeterred, Marilyn continues her studies until she engages in a relationship with the young professor in an elective class on the American cowboy, James Lee. Marilyn embraces James, whom she truly loves, in spite of - and perhaps for - his different looks and background, relishing when her mother mistakenly assumes he is from a Southern family. Marilyn quickly becomes pregnant with Nath, and she leaves her studies at Harvard to marry James and have the child. At the time, Marilyn believes that she will resume her studies.

Eight years later, she has not resumed her studies, and in the wake of her mother's death Marilyn realizes she still wants to become a doctor with or without a family. Her mother's death seems to free Marilyn from ending up like her mother, a woman whom Marilyn thinks nobody will remember except what she cooked for them. In defiance, Marilyn refuses to prepare food for her family and instead relies on takeout and frozen meals, though she does keep her mother's Betty Crocker cookbook.

Marilyn's flight from James, Nath, and Lydia could be seen as a midlife crisis, yet she still returns home after she learns she is pregnant with Hannah because she is at heart dutiful and honest. In so doing Marilyn realizes she is trapped by domesticity and will never realize her dream. Instead she channels it to Lydia. She has accepted that she will never realize her goal to become a doctor, so when Lydia dies Marilyn understands that a part of her quest has died with Lydia, whom she attempted to mold in her image.

Marilyn's fear that she is seen as a "hysterical housewife" haunts her. When she discovers James' affair with Louisa, Marilyn decides she will go to retrieve her husband just like he retrieved her from the apartment in Toledo. Marilyn is furious with James and embarrassed at how he has made a fool out of her. An argument between them brings up a central disharmony in their relationship.

Marilyn seems blind to the fact that their family is different. Apart from using the word "kowtow" nothing indicates any acknowledgment on her part that her family does not fit in and is not accepted by her peers in their suburban Ohio town. Thus, it is from a standpoint of disbelief that she does not agree with James that if Lydia were white her death would never have happened. Until then, Marilyn does not realize that James feels like an outsider in a negative way, whereas for Marilyn James' difference was attractive to her since she would stand out from others, especially from her white Southern background. As the novel comes to a close, the reader sees Marilyn's growing acceptance that her husband feels this way and her acceptance that Lydia's death was a suicide. As she embraces Hannah, she indicates she will now focus on her family's future.