cap 4: In trouble?

She's nervous. She thinks she's in trouble for going outside the walls of the Abbey. That's why she rushes in and starts confessing right away.

I just wonder if she has a little niggling thought in the back of her mind that she doesn't belong there. I know she thinks she does, but I wonder if in moments like this, when she's just spent a great day outside the Abbey only to return to be reprimanded for it, if she wonders.  So I imagine there is fear, not for being in trouble, she's used to that.  Fear that something she wants so much might be slipping through her fingers. 

Maybe.

nonsense that makes sense. I especially like what you said about the lyrics... she goes out of the abbey when her heart is lonely. that should have told her that the abbey life wasn't for her. but maybe she figures she would feel lonely anywhere, and the abbey is where she feels the least lonely. she doesn't see it but she wants to be a nun, not because it's where she belongs but because it's the safest. finding your life = risking disappointment and heartbreak. as an orphan, she had enough of that already.

I should think also that, once you have retreated into a convent, it is very easy to feel you have no qualifications/experience to meet the challenges of outside life or hold down a job, and the longer you are there the worse this gets. How long has Maria been a novice there? I imagine perhaps a year, which isn't too long, but I can see that with longer periods this can get acute.

This discussion re-raises in my mind the question of why she was there in the first place. Loving God, I get that, wanting to serve HIm, but really? Especially since she did apparently have other options. The one time I wrote about this, I had her chalk it up to being the kind of person who never does things halfway.

I think the point about losing confidence if she's been cloistered there for a while is smart, indigoblue

What is being depicted on the wall mural behind Maria in this picture? Is that Jesus's body being taken down from the cross? I often wonder why some people/places choose to show religious art that is positive and triumphant, while others choose the more gruesome aspects to depict. I guess what is gruesome is all in what you are used to. I overheard a conversation once about crucifix hanging in someone's kids's room and one person way saying "You have a statue of someone who is tortured and dying hanging in your baby's bedroom?!" and the other person said, "Yes, we have several in our house. He is our savior."  It was an interesting conversation.  In an abbey, I suppose you want to be reminded more of the sacrifice made so giant art of this nature is more normal than it would be in other places.  

I think it is interesting how the screencap of Maria in the Abbey shows her so dwarfed by the mural that she seems very small and insignificant- deliberate, I'm sure.

I seem to remember that, if you look carefully at the paintings in the ballroom behind Elsa and Max talking together, a couple of them show ladies without much on at all!

Yes, she was looking at the walls when she was in the ballroom...imagine having a sheltered upbringing, getting used to life in the Abbey, then being sent to a house with reclining nudes on such very public display. She must have wondered what sort of person the Captain was; all the more shocking when he slammed open the doors. Do you think he knew this, which explains why he was relatively restrained when he said that there were rooms in the house which were not to be disturbed?

Maybe when she was looking at him in the hall 'that way', she was wondering whether he was a rather lascivious sort of person? Was this why he was rather coy, saying "Why do you look at me that way?" And her response (all she could think of in a hurry) was "You don't look very like a sea captain, Sir"?