Dahlia266

Diana's reaction to her aunt being gay was interesting, to say the least. She was evidently raised in a more conventional lifestyle than Anne, and I presume that she was never told that gay people even existed in the world (seeing as not even her parents knew of Josephine and Gertrude). So when she finds out by attending the gay soiree that her aunt wasn't whom she believed her to be (she's known her aunt her whole life and she's been under the impression that she knew everything about her), it was only natural that she would feel saddened and confused by her aunt's sexuality. I don't know if this is the best analogy, but it's sort of like believing your whole childhood that Santa Claus exists. This belief constitutes the foundations of your whole worldview, only for that to come crashing down when you connect the dots and realise that he's just a myth. The world will never be the same for you again. In this case, Diana believes that only man and woman can love each other romantically, but then all of a sudden this is not the case anymore. She's forced to reevaluate her own view on the world. I think she reacted negatively initially e.g. it's unnatural, it's not right, etc. because it didn't quite fit in her view on people and life in general, plus the shock that her aunt had kept this massive secret from her family for YEARS must have been hard to swallow. And from what I remember Cole was like 'well, how would your aunt feel if she felt like a defect, like there was something wrong with her'? He's trying to say that there's nothing wrong with her, she's the same woman she's always been, nothing's changed, etc. Both Anne and Cole are eccentric and open-minded individuals, believing there's more to the world than what society dictates, so naturally they've embraced Josephine and her colorful group of friends from the get-go. Diana represents the more conservative side of 19th century society - she grew up in a rural village, where people were even more close-minded than in the cities back then. She's obviously uncomfortable with the idea of alternative sexualities, especially since her aunt is involved, and so it takes her way longer for her to get used to it than Anne and Cole. In the end though, I don't think that Diana truly accepted it in the way that her 'free-spirited' friends have. She may not even like or agree with it, but she still loves her aunt and she's accepted her that this is who she is and she can't change that. In truth she is still the same Aunt Josephine that she's known and loved, just with added layers.