The name of the game in this novel is "shame." There is no mistaking the plot's focus on shame. From the onset, that is what Kate likes about Baba, that Baba does not carry shame and does not inflict further shame on Kate who is secretly shaming herself to the brim. Kate shames herself into delusional understandings of reality and life, and she ends up offending Baba, because Kate's point of view is so judgmental against herself that Baba cannot pretend Kate doesn't think less of her.
The question ends up being about sexual repression and religious belief. There is value in waiting until marriage, but Kate does this in a cognitively dissonant way. Kate would hate herself if she ever felt like a scandal, and she does not acknowledge her own desire to do what she perceives is evil. When catastrophe comes into her life because of a failed relationship, Kate's true character is exposed; she is dissonant because her self-shame makes her unlikely to admit when she feels sexual desire.
But eventually, the crisis reaches a fever pitch and her body insists on doing what it wants. The novel's exploration of sexuality is an investigation into a kind of "BDSM" of self, where secretly, Kate has been so controlling and tyrannical in her relationship to self that the emergence of bodily sexual pleasure creates within her a kind of tumultuous storm of self. Baba, not understanding the dynamic relationship of Kate to herself, only sees Kate from the point of view Kate cannot seem to accomplish.
