“He watches her walk towards him in the dress she knows he likes. Stiff fabric, taut across her hips. Red. The same color as her underwear. Lace with little bows. As if Kate herself is something to be unwrapped, to be torn open.”

This quote indicates how completely Simon controls all aspects of Kate’s life, including her choice of underwear. Further, the quote implies that this control exists because Simon regards Kate as an object. She describes herself as a present, implying the violence of how he will unwrap his “gift” and play with his new toy.

“She just went to the library to read, to escape into other people’s imaginations [...] Perhaps that was what he really had a problem with. That he could control her body but not her mind.”

Simon tracks Kate’s whereabouts through an app on her phone. He has already made her quit her job as a children’s book editor. Her only other option for remaining connected to the books she loves is to go to the library. Kate’s observation here suggests that she is something more than a pretty toy: She has a mind of her own. Because thoughts and imagination are invisible, Simon has difficulty staking a claim to this territory.

“She’d be cloistered indoors and forced to learn all manner of useless conversational skills and rules of etiquette. All so that Father could offer her up to some grizzled old baron or another—as if she were something to be bartered with for favors. Or something to be rid of.”

This quote is from Violet, but she makes an analogy similar to Kate’s remark about being treated as a present. In this case, Violet sees herself as a sacrifice to be “offered up” to one of her father’s friends. In both instances, women are commodities that only hold value to the men who own them. In Violet’s case, she questions whether she has any value at all to her father and speculates that he may only want a convenient way to get rid of her.