Passage 4:

The conversation between them in this passage shows their disagreement. At the end, Dorothy accepts to come back and assist her daughter.

H& D's disagreement
In this passage, the reader is made to discover that H&D's wonderful ideal is gradually turning into a nightmare.
At this point, there are 2 elements of discord in the couple:
- the girls they have hired to help Harriet at home
- how to deal with the Christmas festivities

As often in the first part of the novel,critical conversations take place in H&D's bedroom, in their bed. Here, for the first time, we can feel a growing incomprehension and tension between them.They react very differently to the present situation :
Harriet who is exhausted both physically and psychologically, reacts in a very emotional way.
She weeps all the time and complains, she ignores baby Paul and is basically a nervous wreck. David is more rational. He can see that she is tired and wants to help but the solutions he suggests are rejected by Harriet. She refuses to keep the girls they have hired because she thinks they are worthless and she wants the whole family to come for X-Mas because she thinks things will be easier with them around. David knows it isn't a sensible approach and he tries to reason her without success.

There is a prophetic dimension to this passage as it shows in a limited way that Harriet's dissatisfaction is going to spread to the entire household. We perceive it here through her relationship with David who wants to help but doesn't understand her reactions and can't help, but also through her relationship with Dorothy, her own mother, whom she hasn't told about her 5th pregnancy yet (out of shame) and who feels emotionally blackmailed into coming back to help her daughter although she badly needed a break.
In other words, Harriet is beginning to isolate herself from the other members of her family.

The fifth pregnancy is not welcome. The reader is made to understand this through various elements :
1st paragraph :
We understand that H & D had decided not to have any more children for a while and had been extra careful. There is a subtle hint to the responsibility of the bedroom referred to as a « baby maker ».
lines 16/17 :
Harriet is convinced that the « foetus is poisoning her ».
This is also a hint that there is something unnatural in this pregnancy and that Harriet, so far, is the only one to know it and that she is thus isolated, estranged from David who doesn't understand her reaction (it was not part of their contract), from her mother (who would be very angry when she found out about the pregnancy), from her children, whom she can't look after properly because she is obsessed with this pregancy.