What do the doors and gates of the Matula represent in the novel, Abigail?

The doors and gates of the Matula represent the threshold between childhood and adulthood. When Gina first arrives at the school, she notes that in “passing over that threshold” of the door to the director’s office she was “like a child being born, or a dying man exhaling his last breath” (20). When she surreptitiously meets up with Feri and later attempts to escape from the Matula with him, their interactions take place at the gates of the school, with him representing the duplicitous world of war and adulthood outside the school, while she embodies the unquestioning innocence of childhood.