Mothering Sunday

“The sunshine only applauded their nakedness, dismissing all secrecy from what they were doing, though it was utterly secret.”

After she has made love with Paul, Jane notices the sun streaming into his room and onto their naked bodies. The open curtains and window, like their nakedness, symbolize their openness to each other and the world—their rejection of concealment. It also symbolizes their rejection of the constraints and markers of social convention.

“I drove Iris and Ethel to the station.”

Paul makes this seemingly innocuous statement of fact to Jane while undressing her. In context, it suggests that he will now take on a more equal or even subservient role with respect to Jane. By chauffeuring his own servants, he suggests that, at least for that day, class barriers do not exist between him and Jane.

“All her life she would try to see it, to bring back this Mothering Sunday, even as it receded and even as its very reason for existing became a historical oddity, the custom of another age.”

Jane, later in life, reflects on how unique and special that Mothering Sunday with Paul in 1924 was. This is why she has always tried to remember and reimagine it. Its uniqueness lies partly in the fact that, like the tradition of Mothering Sunday itself, it has faded into the sands of time and can never occur again.