Kitty Maule is a watcher, reserved, intelligent, and controlled. The subject of her scrutiny, and of … Providence, is her life. It is an interesting enough life, in a modest sort of way, and Kitty knows precisely what it contains and what it lacks…. She can catalogue her yearnings for religious faith, and see how she should go about winning the man she longs for. She is a keen observer, but by the end of Providence it is clear that she has gotten it all wrong.

The novel is full of missed signals; Kitty is so absorbed in her deficiencies that she cannot see them for what they are…. [Whenever] she does feel the stirrings of faith, or even of spontaneous emotion, she quickly suppresses them. She smothers whatever is "too dangerous to contemplate," or too intimate to be revealed incautiously. Even her impatience with restraint is restrained….

When...