Noemí’s observations and musings echo Catalina’s letter. Catalina wrote that the house was “sick with rot,” and she’d drawn circles in the margins of her letter. Though Noemí dismisses this early observation about possible poisonous gas coming from the wallpaper, by the end of the novel this turns out to be more relevant than she now knows. Furthermore, she’s able to make this observation only because she’s been educated (she’d read about the Victorians in a book, and she’d learned about dyes from her father), showing how important education truly is.