The chatter around her also subsided, and even from the children's table I felt some unnamable, unbridgeable separation. My grandfather was embarrassed as Christina's sisters are embarrassed. Unity in both my own and Christina's family, at base level, is contingent upon an unspoken ideal of the body. For Christina, the female ideal is one of silence and restraint. Social norms of physicality in both contexts ensure a degree of coherence.
Difference poses a threat, interrupting surface unity with the unfamiliar.
The brutal attempt at silencing Christina occurs precisely because of separation. This separation arises not only from the introduction of Christina's difference, but from the town's own division between themselves and their ideal. Like Christina, the people of St. Trond exist in a state of perpetual detachment. While they physically exist away from God as mortals, they also mis-read Christina's actions as those of the devil. This misjudgment demonstrates that they are not with God spiritually as well as physically, for they cannot comprehend His mysterious works.