She experiences a depression so deep it is tranquilizing, she eats whatever he tells her to eat, she experiences no more ownership over her own body than if it were a piece of litter.

In school the boys had tried to break her with cruelty and disregard, and in college men had tried to do it with sex and popularity, all with the same aim of subjugating some force in her personality. It depressed her to think people were so predictable. Whether she was respected or despised, it didn't make much difference in the end.

It's not that I get off on being degraded as such, she says. I just like to know that I would degrade myself for someone if they wanted me too. Does that make sense? I don't know if it does, I've been thinking about it. It's about dynamic, more than what actually happens.

The whole time we were together, why didn't you tell me any of this? I don't know. I suppose I didn't want you to think I was damaged or something. I was probably afraid you wouldn't want me anymore.

Sometimes in the middle of the day she remembers something Jamie has said or done to her, and all the energy leaves her completely, so her body feels like a carcass, something immensely heavy and awful that she has to carry around.

He tells her bad things about herself. It's hard to know whether Marianne likes to hear those things; shes desires to hear them, but she's conscious by now of being able to desire in some sense what she does not want. The quality of gratification is thin and hard, arriving too quickly and then leaving her sick and shivery.

The inside of her body seems to be gravitating further and further downward, toward the floor, toward the center of the earth.

Shame surrounded her like a shroud. She could hardly see through it.

She's missing some primal instinct, self-defense or self-preservation, which makes other human being comprehensible.