How does Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman use imagery in A New England Nun?

Ambiguous images of sexuality abound in this story, sedate as Louisa's life appears to be. When she finishes feeding Caesar and returns inside her house, she removes a "green gingham apron, disclosing a shorter one of pink and white print." Shortly she hears Joe Dagget on the front walk, removes the pink and white apron, and "under that was still another white linen with a little cambric edging on the bottom." She wears not one but three aprons, each one suggesting symbolic if not actual defense of her own virginity. When Dagget visits, "he felt as if surrounded by a hedge of lace. He was afraid to stir lest he should put a clumsy foot or hand through the fairy web, and he had always the consciousness that Louisa was watching fearfully lest he should." The visual image of clumsy hand breaking the "fairy web" of lace like the cambric edging on Louisa's company apron suggests once again that Louisa's real fear is Joe's dominance rather than her own sexuality.