[...] Ultimately, what these asides hint at is the wholly transformative power of the epiphany to come, the one that will make Jeni "a very different person," one who will presumably no longer be subject to the obsessive narcissism of the young wife, her attempts at caring for her husband only flimsy masks for her own intensely navel-gazing self-interest. Only after her epiphany will she be able to look back "on the towering self-absorption of her naivete in those years" with "a mixture of contempt and compassion for the utter child she had been."