One thing I wonder (perhaps because I have known a few women like this, who think that their reputation is the most important thing in the world and will sacrifice their own personal happiness and that of anyone around them to maintain it) is: what is the original wound here?
Surely either Amelia or one of her connections (as Maud would say) went through something truly ugly that implanted this fear into her mind? Because having your community turn on you is a legitimately traumatic thing (as Cissy could tell us) and most people do try to avoid it, but with the Stirlings in general and Amelia in particular, it rises to an almost pathological level.
Ostracism/banishment/exile is one of the oldest non-(physically-)violent mechanisms of societal censure, dating back to the days when being thrown out of the community would legitimately lead to your death because you couldn't survive on your own. Loneliness is kind of the original human fear.
Now, we all know that Amelia is overreacting to a truly abusive extent. The societal censure she's so scared of almost certainly isn't lethal, and at any rate, we know that it doesn't end up really affecting Valancy (both because she's a different kind of person who doesn't care as much; because she finds a new community of her own in Barney and the Gays and--in typical Maud fashion--her new home and the nature surrounding it; and because of the revelations at the end of the book that kind of overturn the power dynamics).
But we also know that it can leave you desperately alone and heartbroken like Cissy. I think it's important that we do indeed see a situation in which a ruined reputation leads to real suffering.
Of course, I think both Maud and all of us would argue that the solution that Cissy finds herself in is exactly what Barney and Valancy both do: saying, "Screw reputations, this woman is a victim, and I'm going to continue to care for her." But there was only so much Barney could do without making the situation even worse for Cissy, and we know that she was alone for several years before Valancy made the decision to help her. So even though the morally correct thing to do is to reach out to a person in Cissy's situation, that doesn't always happen, especially in a community like this.
Which brings me back to Amelia. She's right, to a certain extent, that having your dirty laundry dragged out into public can materially and emotionally affect your life in truly negative ways. But her sense of proportion is skewed, and I feel like that has to come from somewhere.
Either she has seen something traumatic happen to someone she knew or someone who raised her did or someone who raised someone she did did. (How's that for a sentence?)
But I bet if you go back far enough, you'd find a real situation where someone really did suffer because of social ostracism. And like a pearl growing up around a bit of grit, it took on layers of fear as the years passed, till Amelia reached the point where she couldn't see past it to things that matter more, like healthy relationships, kindness, and flourishing.
I'm betting there's a cycle here that we aren't aware of because Valancy isn't aware of it. I'm willing to bet she knows almost nothing about Amelia's inner life or her trauma. But as some of us (ahem) know very well, just because you have no idea what your parents' trauma is doesn't mean that it doesn't shape your life. Valancy ends up breaking a cycle that I'm sure she doesn't even realize exists.
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