Summary

Chapter 7 begins with Mr. and Mrs. Hilbery waiting for Katherine to come home for dinner. When she arrives, the three of them discuss poetry and the different ways people of different classes may read it. Katherine reflects on her relationship with her parents and realizes that, while she agrees with them on most topics, they do not fully understand her. After dinner, Katherine and Mrs. Hilbery leave the room so that Mr. Hilbery can smoke his cigar in private, a separation of the genders that happens every evening. Together in the drawing room, Mrs. Hilbery and Katherine discuss Katherine’s grandparents, and Mrs. Hilbery tells Katherine to make sure she loves the man she marries. The chapter ends with Mr. Hilbery joining his wife and daughter in the drawing room as Katherine reads to them from a Henry Fielding novel.

At the beginning...