“Yes, she's a problem. I'm afraid she'll be a problem for you, too. With a smaller community, she may be better. Give her responsibility, Sister. She badly wants importance.”
Foreshadowing. When Sister Clodagh has been informed by the Mother Superior that she is to be in charge of the school and dispensary located 8,000 feet up in the “back of beyond” in the Himalayas, she ticks off those sisters whom she will oversee. Sister Briony because of her strength. Sister Philippa for gardening. Sister Honey because she’s popular and they will need someone who is popular with the natives. When the Mother then mentions Sister Ruth, Clodagh’s immediate response is concern…because Ruth is ill. The she inquires of the Mother “do you think our vocation is her vocation?” The above is the response Clodagh gets and the entire exchange situates the foreshadowing that Ruth is sick (mentally, it turns out) and that perhaps she is not quite committed to her vows as possible.
“Without discipline we should all behave like children.”
The natives are coming to the nuns only because they are being paid with the implication that it is a kind of behavioral psychological technique: eventually they will simply be conditioned into going and won’t need to be paid. Sister Clodagh is against it, arguing that this is the way you treat children and they should just simply be ordered to come. Though this exchange is contextually about the psychology of behavior of the natives, the subtext is another example of foreshadowing. Discipline is what keeps nuns from giving into all the natural emotions and desires which have no place among them and the reference to a lack of discipline can be interpreted as a reference to Sister Ruth’s behavior later on.
"I told you it was no place to put a nunnery. There's something in the atmosphere that makes everything seem exaggerated. Don't you understand? You must all get away before something happens!"
The film subtly alludes to the effect of the thing atmosphere upon the psychological state of the nuns not used to such elevation. It is implicated as the cause of the various breakdowns and problems the women confront, but is rather placed carefully in the background as a contributing aspect. Mr. Dean, as a result of having gotten used to the atmosphere by living within it for years can see effect and likely has first-hand knowledge, but he carries no authority to stop them except for pleading.
“I don't love anyone!”
Sister Ruth is now just Ruth, having given up her vows, put on a sexy red dress and carnally applied a scandalously red shade of lipstick. She runs to Mr. Dean to profess her love because he is the only one there who’s ever been kind to her. He’s puzzled, not remembering any particular act of kindness. As her final grip on conscious control of her repressed desires starts to slip away with his indifference, she reaches for the only logical explanation she has left: Dean doesn’t want her because he’s in love with Sister Clodagh. The full important of meaning in his reply, shouted in Ruth’s face, causes sanity to collapse all around here in a red haze as she faints. Her return to consciousness is in name only; her id has taken over control of her superego and her repressed motivations can no longer be held in check by her conscience. When she comes to and rises up from her reclining position on a chair, she even looks different, pale and sweating, the lower lids of her flaming with a red to match her dress and lips. Mr. Dean's admission has taken the world away from Ruth who is now on a mission of vengeance.
