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“When she arrived at the laboratory, though, she found herself the only girl in a room of fifteen men. The instructor tutted and said, ‘Miss Walker you’d better tie up those golden locks.’ ‘Can I light the burner for you?’ Someone else would say. ‘Let me open that jar for you.”’(Ng 26) Marilyn faced many challenges as a student trying to persevere to become a doctor and one of the biggest problems she faced was discrimination. She had been the only girl in her chemistry class and all of the men thought they were better than her and they tried helping her with everything like she was a little girl. This made Marilyn want to prove these people wrong and she persevered even harder to become a better student and chase her dreams of becoming a doctor.

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"It struck her then, as if someone had said it aloud: her mother was dead, and the only thing worth remembering about her, in the end, was that she had cooked. Marilyn thought uneasily of her own life, of hours spent making breakfasts, serving dinners, packing lunches into neat paper bags.”(Ng 86)
When Marilyn's mother had died and she went back to her house she grew up in, she thought about her mother again for the first time in years. She had always gone against what her mother had wanted for her and when she went back to her mother's she realized her dream was fading away and she was becoming more like her mother everyday. This caused Marilyn to want to change her life around and go back on track to her dreams and it reminded her of what she never wants to be like.

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“The young doctor said, ‘We’ll call you with the results on Tuesday, Mr. and Mrs. Lee, but it looks like you’ll be due in January.’” (Ng 144)
Marilyn being pregnant with Hannah ruined her dreams of becoming a doctor because she knew that she couldn't study at the college anymore and she would have to return home again back to her life that reminded her so much of her mother. When Marilyn finally got back she was a changed woman and this pregnancy caused a lot of change in life's plans.

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Trying to fulfill her dream through Lydia

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Trying to fulfill her dream through Lydia

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“It was a sign, Marilyn decided. For her it was too late. But it wasn't too late for Lydia. Marilyn would not be like her own mother, shunting her daughter toward husband and house, a life spent safely behind a deadbolt. She would help Lydia do everything she was capable of. She would spend the rest of her years guiding Lydia, sheltering her, the way you tended a prize rose: helping it grow, propping it with steaks, arching each stem towards perfection” (Page 147).
Marilyn deciding to put her dream into another person caused her to be a completely different type of mother, she started being a helicopter mom and pressuring Lydia to become the student that Marilyn could never be. She also started giving all of her attention to Lydia and putting all of her focus on her school, pressuring her to do good.

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“Marilyn, unaware that her youngest is listening so closely, so longingly, blots her eyes and replaces the diaries on the shelf and makes herself a promise. She will figure out what happened to Lydia. She will find out who is responsible. She will find out what went wrong.” (Ng 76)
Marilyn was convinced that Lydia's death was caused by someone or something else other than suicide and this thought in her mind caused her to go more and more insane because she needed to find out who did this or how this happened. Even through all of the police investigation and no evidence of anything but suicide, Marilyn was convinced it was something else and this caused her to change and become more caught up in the thought of her daughter dying.

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“Marilyn’s voice quivers, and she clenches her hands, as if stilling them will still the trembling inside of her. ‘If she were a white girl, they’d keep looking.”’(Ng 202)
Marilyn says this to James and she doesn't realize how much those words hurt him. James ended up leaving after she said this and not returning for multiple days. This caused Marilyn to think to herself that when he comes back she is going to comfort him and show him love. Understanding later how much she hurt James with those words made her give him more forgiveness and eventually end up being together again.