She always got passionately fond of people who caused her trouble later.

When she loved a man, she wasn't thinking of having fun in the present; she was dreaming about being happy and living together forever.
And as Coupeau, with a chuckle, spoke of her two children, saying they hadn't come from under a bolster, she slapped his fingers; she added that she was, no doubt made on the model of other women; women thought of their home, slaved to keep the place clean and tidy, and went to bed too tired at night not to go to sleep at once.

Besides, she resembled her mother, a stout laboring woman who died at her work and who had served as beast of burden to old Macquart for more than twenty years.
Her mother's shoulders had been heavy enough to smash through doors, but that didn't prevent her from being soft-hearted and madly attracted to people.

And if she limped a little, she no doubt owed that to the poor woman, whom old Macquart used to belabor with blows.

Her mother had told her about the times when Macquart came home drunk and brutally bruised her.