Kit did not tell the Woods that she was coming to live with them, and she had never even met them before she showed up at their door. The Woods would naturally be surprised to see her. Also, Kit came from Barbados, a colony where she had a much different upbringing from the stuffy Puritanical ways of Wethersfield.
The Woods are shocked from the very first time they see Kit in her fancy clothes, which stand out as a metaphor for how different she is from everyone else there.
"You wore a dress like that to travel in?"
In her eagerness to make a good impression Kit had selected this dress with care, but here in this plain room it seemed over elegant. The three other women were all wearing some nondescript sort of coarse gray stuff. (Ch. 3)
The Woods are shocked at Kit’s flashy dresses and the fact that she has never worked a day in her life. She reads plays instead of the Bible. She doesn’t understand their customs, and while she tries to respect them, she is also not afraid to show when she disapproves.
The Woods are also not afraid to show they disapprove of her. Kit doesn’t have an appropriate dress for Meeting (church). She doesn’t know how to cook or clean. She is impatient and her cousins see her as somewhat of a threat or a nuisance. She is a threat because there is another woman in the house whom men like William Ashby might court, and she is a nuisance because they have to teach her and do her chores.
First impressions aside, Kit and the Woods eventually find a way to coexist. Kit makes herself more or less useful, and all of the girls pair themselves off with eligible bachelors. Kit realizes that she has to find a way to live in Wethersfield, and they have to live with her.
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