Isabella lives a long life and challenges the expectations of her era by having formative experiences and self-discovery in midlife and beyond. Isabella begins a sexual relationship with Crawford when she is in her forties and he is more than a decade younger than her, subverting the idea that women over a certain age are not sexual and attractive. She reflects on “a slipping back to my younger years, that tantalizing hope and possibility not only in my body but in what I might mean to the world” (248). Throughout the novel, Isabella revels in her capacity for pleasure and new forms of self-awareness.

Isabella also redefines ideas of maternity. After losing her only child and having a miscarriage, she finds herself at odds with her era’s gendered expectations. She is supposed to be defined by biological motherhood, and when a doctor tells her she’ll never conceive again, it is as though he is condemning her to an unfulfilled life. However, she finds a nontraditional form of motherhood later in life when she and Jack unexpectedly become the guardians of their three young nephews. This prompts Isabella to observe that “life is not over in your middle years. For many, this is when we arrive as ourselves in the world” (189).