Yet, unlike Austen, Bowen's free indirect discourse and narrative voice is not a clearly moralizing force - we are not laughing with the speaker, admiring our heroine's strength of character and intellectual growth.
Rather than Woolf, Bowen echoes Austen, consulting the language of materialism and the comedy of manners. If Woolf is transparent, Bowen is intentionally opaque. The narration doesn't work to expose the inner truths and inner lives, but rather uses materials, dialogue, and the richness of things to give friction between the interior and exterior selves. The novel is unlike Woolf's (at times associated with Bowen, and writing just a generation before). By holding a magnifying glass over each of these ideas, Bowen shows just how fraught, and how fragile, our psyches - all our psyches - can be. It is a reflection on bourgeois cruelty, on teenage girlhood, and the sanctity of one's private thoughts. This novel is one that forces us to scrutinize the moments of social pause and discomfort.
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