The figure of Mrs. Trenchard is the monumental figure of this novel. In her, an inexpressive and apparently commonplace woman, is concentrated all the jealous tenacity of a strong parent who is unwilling to let go her child. Her strength lies mainly in her ability, as the unsympathetic see it, to impose terms on the creative possibilities of those she loves, and she singles out the considerate Katherine as the person whose destiny she wills to govern. When Katherine consents to be engaged for a year, she realizes the necessity of paying any reasonable price to hold her mother and the Trenchards, to win them to Phil. But the mother is like most dominant family-centered mothers, she has no ultimate respect for her daughter’s will. She knows better than her daughter. And Katherine is forced in the end to break the adjustment that was forged for love through years.
—The New Republic, December 8, 1917
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