smiley's estranged wife ann had lived in carne as a child, and upon his arrival, he becomes the subject of snide gossip. he also is a witness to an invidious class division between "town and gown" which is superimposed upon a religious division between adherents of the church of england and nonconformists. as the wife of a public school teacher, and as a nonconformist, stella rhodes occupied a low rank in the local social hierarchy, especially in the estimation of carne's upper crust.