Under the Gables

Detail from the Merode Altarpiece by Robert Campin, 1425. Women, it seems, enjoy reading about other women or girls doing housekeeping chor...

Young Girl Ironing by Louis Leopold Boilly, 1761-1845. Very few women I know like to iron, and quite a few hate it. So I have found it odd t...

Knitting in Highbridge Park was painted in 1918 by George Luks. Highbridge Park sits on the Manhattan side of the Harlem River separating n...

Woman cleaning grain outside her home. The following is taken from Rumer Godden's short story "The Oyster," about a young Indi...

A woman embroidering in India From "Rahmin," a short story by Rumer Godden: In Calcutta, where I lived, the chiken-wallahs worked...

This past week, quite by accident, I had the great pleasure of reading two novels about young English girls in India. First I read The River...

Carl Larsson's living room--that's a line of pink geraniums in the window. Whenever I think of geraniums in the window, I also think...