Miss Kilman, a religious woman, takes Clarissa's daughter Elizabeth shopping against Clarissa's wishes. Clarissa struggles to understand Kilman's influence over her daughter and why communication becomes more difficult as she ages. Kilman desires to resemble Clarissa's lifestyle but finds solace only in prayer. Elizabeth considers various career paths, though will likely follow her parents' upper-class lifestyle. The rooms of a house and figure of an old woman are used as metaphors for the inner life of the soul.

1. Ana Retamar

2. • Elizabeth enters the room when her mother
rests. Miss Kilman waits for her on the
landing
• Miss Kilman wears an unflattering mackintosh
coat
• She was a victim of anti-German discrimination
• She had turned into a Church and feels she does
not envy women she pitted them

3. • Miss Kilman wishes Clarissa to fell like a tree.
Trees with their extensive root system, are like
the soul, so this metaphor suggests that Miss is
out to kill souls
• Clarissa struggles to protect her soul
• She feels that Kilman had taken her daughter
from her
• «You are taking Elizabeth to the stores?»
• «Miss Kilman said she was»

4. • Clarissa thinks that love and religion are the
cruelest things in the world
• While thinking this Clarissa watches an old
woman in the house opposite her climbing the
stairs and looking out the window.
• Interplay between communication and privacy.
Clarissa struggles to understand why people
need privacy, and what makes communication so
difficult as Clarissa grows older, she reflects
more but communicates less.

5. • Mss Kilman struggles to control her desire to
resemble Clarissa and prays to god.
• Petticoat

6. • All professions are open to women.
• Elizabeth considers become a doctor or a
farmer or go into Parliament.
• It seems likely that she will probably follow her
parents into an upper-class life.

8. • The rooms of a house are a metaphor for
the soul.
• The figure of the old woman also suggests
both the consolation of the human soul and
its loneliness.