While attending Queen Victoria girls' school, she was taught to memorize a poem about daffodils. (This poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" was written by William Wordsworth roughly two centuries ago.) The poem recalls the beauty of daffodils that the speaker has seen years ago. Lucy cannot appreciate this beauty, because daffodils do not grow on her island. After reciting the poem, Lucy is applauded and she explains that at this moment she feels fake. She feels like people see her as English on the inside, despite her strong antipathy towards them. The daffodils represent Lucy's alienation from both her education, and from her new home. Lucy's mother continually occupies Lucy's thoughts, exciting fury, scorn, desire, and guilt. Lucy relates a huge sum of her experiences to some memory or opinion about her mother, which proves the power of the mother-daughter bond. The very departure that Lucy hopes to make with her journey to America, however, causes her sorrow, for she believes she'll never again know the kind of love she shared with her mother. Though Lucy determines that she must break with her mother to achieve adulthood, she aches powerful feelings of loss in the process. The seasons also climax differences between Lucy's old surroundings and her new northern climate. Lucy has an attitude toward the seasons that mirrors her mixed feelings about her native country. Though she rises the amount of weather and finds the summers less cruel than at home, in the colder months, she misses the warm sun and lively colors of the island. The seasons, then, highlight both Lucy's inner and outer situations and grant them larger meaning by connecting them to a natural phenomenon experienced by many. Lucy's letters from home brighten her difficult relationship with her mother. As Lucy takes to support her mother's unopened letters on her dresser, she shows a defiance that also betrays her daughterly attachment: she doesn't discard them and doubts the longing she'd feel if she saw her mother's words. When Lucy finally reads the letter listing her father's death and her mother's disaster, she comes to her mother's financial aid but also releases her anger in a letter home, once again representing her mixed feelings. After burning the letters she's saved, Lucy finds herself able to move on. She fixes to leave Lewis and Mariah's apartment and sends a letter home, stating empathy for her mother but also breaking with her by giving an untrue address. Throughout the novel, letters serve as markers of Lucy's struggle to make a new life for herself by dodging her past.
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