Esther : "Do you think there's something wrong with a woman alone?"
Mrs Van Buren : "What I think is of little consequence. If I were brave, I'd collect my things right now and find a small clean room someplace on the other side of the park. No, further, in fact. And I'd....but it isn't a possibility, is it?"
This conversation demonstrates the fact that the life that women wanted was not the life they were able to have. Women were permitted the life that men decreed they were allowed to have. Mrs Van Buren is not happy in her marriage and would very much like to leave her husband, start again on her own and do a lot of other things independently that she knows she cannot do because she is a woman, and women don't get to choose the direction of their own lives. A woman cannot live alone and be independent because she wants to, and that is why she stays in the marriage.
Esther is worried that she is going to end up alone, which is why she accepts George's proposal of marriage. She is conflicted about doing so and the fact that she asks Mrs Van Buren her opinion about women who are without men shows that she is not marrying because she is in love, or particularly wants to do so but because she is aware that society feel it is time that she was married, and there is a societal obligation to do so.
Mayme : "And do you love him?"
Esther : "As much as you can love a man you ain't seen. I'm thirty five, Mayme, and he wants to marry me. And there ain't gonna be no more opportunities, I'm afraid. I've told him yes.'
For Esther, George is not so much Mr Right as Mr Right Time. She has never met him and so feels that she cannot truly fall in love with him sight unseen, but she is fond of him and fond of his letters and the attention that he shows her. She is also grateful for the attention because she knows that there are many younger women out there that he could have chosen. She feels the clock ticking on her eligibility as a bride and for that reason has accepted his proposal.
It also shows how Esther is desperate for marriage even though she still hesitates, she feels like it is now or never and that George is her only opportunity to be acknowledged in society as a woman.
