 Her feminine intellect was described by Jill Campbell as a "threatening" force which her husband once reacted violently against, even though his violence was contained to him acting on it only in a dream-like state.The actual nature of the plot lacks a certainty that would allow an overall stance on women's issues to be determined, and it is not even certain as to where Fielding stood on the issue.His lack of authorial comments seems to reinforce a possible "anxieties about gender confusion" in the plot, and the characters' sexual identities are blurred; the dispute between Mrs Atkinson and Dr Harrison continues until the very end of the novel.