What an extraordinary satisfaction there is in cleaning things! (Does the satisfaction depend on ownership? I suspect so.) - Iris Murdoch

Dora was stunned by this information. She stopped. 'Do you mean' she said, 'that they're completely imprisoned in there?'
Mrs. Marks laughed. 'Not imprisoned, my dear,' she said. 'They are there of their own free will. This is not a prison. It is on the contrary a place which it is very hard to get into, and only the strongest achieve it. Like Mary in the parable, they have chosen the better part.

The novel, the novel proper that is, is about people's treatment of each other, and so it is about human values.

I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important