Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Harvard. Even though she cannot attend Harvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smith cliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds that the dorms and classrooms can'accommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smith cliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized. When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns.

— Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

The lingerie department is the only one that she can reach in her wheelchair. Nevertheless, she is fired the next day because of complaints that a woman who is so obviously not sexually attractive selling alluring nightgowns makes customers uncomfortable. Daunted by her dismissal, she seeks consolation in the arms of the young manager and soon finds herself pregnant. Upon learning of this news, he leaves her for nondisabled woman with a fullerbustline and better homemaking skills in his inaccessible kitchen.

— Rosemarie Garland-Thomson