The kitchen
Because she loathes the idea of having to serve a husband some day, the narrator creates a sense of oppression when she describes the kitchen, where her mother spends most of her day and where she is supposed to help out as well. The smell in particular becomes a symbol of female inferiority in “the hateful, constricted world of women with its permanent reek of garlic and onions.”
A night at the hospital
During one of her shifts at the hospital, the doctor describes the scene as a lonely place of death and decay, devoid of all life. Because she spends much of her time with sick and dying patients, she has almost become one of them, lifeless and without direction: “The night was cold and desolate, the darkness dead and still. The great hospital with its lighted windows crouched in the dark like a wild hyena. The patients’ groans and racking coughs tore at the curtains of the night. I stood alone at the window of my room, staring at the little white flower opening in the vase beside me. As I touched it I shuddered as if I was a corpse touching a living thing for the first time.”
The lively city
One day, at the height of her success, the doctor realizes how disconnected she is from society. Even though she has reached a status of respect and financial wealth, she feels that her need for love has not yet been satisfied when she describes the image of lively crowds inthe city: “I sat alone at my desk after the last patient had left and the duty nurse had gone home. It was still only nine in the evening, the beginning of the night, and the streets were at their liveliest. I stood up and began to pace the room distractedly. I went up to the window and the warm dreary night air touched my face. In the street outside, people were clinging to one another, talking, laughing, scowling. I looked at myself and found that I was looking down on them from a great height.”
The ordinary man
After having lived a life of extremes—from being “imprisoned” by her family to freedom in solitude—the woman doctor is attracted by a man who she describes as ordinary in every way: “An ordinary man wearing ordinary clothes and standing in an ordinary way. He was neither short nor tall, thin nor fat, but I felt that something out of the ordinary hung about him. Perhaps it was that his expression was natural and relaxed, unlike the tense, starched features of those around him... perhaps that he was elegant in spite of his simplicity.” This description creates a sense of stability and security, which is precisely what the doctor longs for.
