Please help me translate this esoteric passage.

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1

<p>Context: In this excerpt from a British novel published in 1938, a woman describes staying with her employer at a fashionable hotel in the resort city of Monte Cristo.</p>

<p>(Line 1) I wonder what my life would be today,
if Mrs. Van Hopper had not been a
snob.
Funny to think that the course of my<br>
(line 5) my existence hung like a thread upon that
quality of hers. Her curiosity was a
disease, almost a mania. At first I had been
Shocked, wretchedly embarrassed when I
watched people laugh behind her</p>

<p>What does the speaker mean by “if Mrs. Van Hopper had not been a snob”
What does this phrase mean? " Funny to think that the course of my existence hung like a thread of hers."
What does the speaker mean by “her curiosity was a disease, almost a mania”?</p>

2

<p>Snob means someone who is condescending. First she imagines how different her life would be if Mrs. Van Hopper was not so condescending. Then she realizes how weird it is that that one trait of Mrs. Van Hopper has had such a big effect on her life (“my existence hung like a thread upon that quality of hers”). Then she says that Mrs. Van Hopper’s curiosity 1) is a bad thing, 2) is all consuming and 3) overpowers her and makes her irrational.</p>

3

<p>Frankly, this passage is not esoteric. But maybe that’s because I have read British literature.</p>