"There is no better example than the Sotherton outing of the way Jane Austen can charge the trivialities of commonplace social events with a weight of significance that turns them into moral drama (...) [B]y the end of the visit Sotherton has become a moral map on which we can chart (...) the course of the various characters as they take a serpentine path through the woods, or edge round a locked gate into the park, or allow themselves to be tempted by an unfastened side-gate into the wilderness. Actions that seem the merest small change of social life resonate with moral implications."

Dr Ian Littlewood in his Introduction to MP, Wordsworth Classics, 2000

With some of the double meanings and symbols in mind, the conversations between Maria and Henry become even more wrong, e.g. this from Henry in Ch. 10:
"And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr Rushworth's authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited."