Léonie and Thérèse eat a meal together in the kitchen. Thérèse notes that Léonie has taken care in setting the table. Léonie says she still uses all of Victorine's recipes. Thérèse finds the meat heavy and rejects the meal. Later, the women kiss each other goodnight. Thérèse will sleep in the master bedroom, where her parents slept before Antoinette became sick. Louis' toiletry objects have been carefully preserved. Thérèse thinks about how she was born in this bed. She imagines making room for her mother in the bed and preparing for a new birth.
The sharing of food is important in the novel. In this chapter, Thérèse is rejecting Léonie's control over her by refusing to eat the meal. By following Victorine's old recipes, Léonie is asserting.....
