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Harvesting Willa Cather's Literary Fields
Author(s): Beth Rundstrom
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Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr., 1995), pp. 217-228
Published by: American Geographical Society
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HARVESTING WILLA CATHER'S LITERARY FIELDS*
BETH RUNDSTROM
Feminist criticism provides a theoretical base for interpreting gendered space in literature. The relationship of fictional women with the environment and their portrayal in the literary landscape are important considerations
and reveal an author's geographies. This theory is the framework for an analysis
of the prairie saga, "O Pioneers!," by Willa Cather. She uses independent houses,
homes, and homesteads to symbolize women; her houses reflect the social roles
and status of women in the early 1900s. Key words: Cather[Willa],feminist criticism,
human-land relationships, literary geography, prairie settlement.
ABSTRACT.
Literary geography examines relationships between landscape and its
portrayal in literature. Virtually all scholarly work in the field cites
the humanistic interpretation of perceived landscape: individuals experience, perceive, and then conceptually re-createspace (Tuan1977).Interpretationsvary because individuals bring differentmind-sets and affinities
to the same landscape. Writerstransform geographical facts into literary
symbols through topophilia, the bond or sentiment between people and
place (Tuan 1974). Human-land relationships are the inspiration and
impetus for invented landscapes; people best express that which they
know and feel. Authors use invented literarysettings, the where of a story,
to represent landscape symbolically. Literary geographers examine an
author's conceptual sense of place to enhance understanding and to
enrich readers' geographies.
Sensitive to gender in spatial issues, feminist geographers agree that
women are important subjects for geographical research (Monk 1984;
Domosh 1991;Kay 1991) and that feminist geographical practices should
be grounded in theory (McDowell 1988, 1989). For literary geography I
propose a theoretical foundation called feminist criticism. Currently,
there is general agreement that researchin literarygeography is a humanistic endeavor that uses subjective assessment of creative literature to
clarify relationships between individuals and their spatial environment.
With abundant text and thought, literary geography is indeed a field
ready to harvest with respect to content and methodology. Assuming that
literary landscapes are open to interpretation,authors are both cognizant
of and influenced by their social milieu in their use of setting to express
perceived conditions of society. I proffer this theoretical approach as a
beginning of literary-geographical theory and criticism. I then analyze
"O Pioneers!"by novelist Willa Cather in this framework.
* I thank
JosephS. Woodfor his assistancewith this article.
Ms. RUNDSTROM is an instructor in geography at George Mason University, Fairfax,
Virginia 22030-4444.
Copyright? 1995by theAmericanGeographical
Societyof NewYork
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THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
FEMINISTCRITICISM
The purpose of feminist criticism is to produce a reading of gendered
space in literary text. It interprets women's experience with the environment as expressed in woman-centered fiction. This viewpoint concurrently dislodges traditional masculinist ideologies and celebrates the
uniqueness of the female perspective. Feminist criticism analyzes the
female author's subjective view of reality. Her portrayal of landscape is
truthful in that it represents her feelings and attitudes about a place.
When the transparent, surface meanings of settings are accepted as authorintended landscape descriptions, the different viewpoint can be understood and appreciated. Such a reading of literary setting descriptions
elucidates an author's geography, her sense of place.
Women use and interpret language in unique and different ways
(Tannen 1990). Their metaphors and free associations reflect their sense
of connection as they relate ideas, people, and places to themselves
(Gilligan 1982). It is important to look for recurring landscape symbols in
women's writings to uncover their intended, yet hidden meanings. On
walking through a wooded glade and witnessing a wild sow suckling her
young in the lush greenery, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings referred to her
fertile Floridian lakeside hammock as "the universe," "the cosmic life"
(Rawlings 1942, 39). To Sarah Orne Jewett (1886), an elusive white heron
symbolized freedom in the Maine woods. Significantly, she used a girlchild to keep the location of the heron's nest a secret from a male hunter.
Though poor, the girl understood and valued freedom above the handsome monetary reward the hunter would have paid her for the information.
Here, too, it is important to consider how an author symbolizes
women in a landscape and the image of women that this produces. These
symbols may indicate women's cultural roles. For example, when Meridel
Le Sueur (1991) was pregnant, she likened herself to a curling-branched
pear tree, heavy with ripening fruit. It is an image of a fertile earth-woman
who provides for her inhabitants-children. Using soil as metaphor for
women, Marge Piercy illustrates women's fertility and universal low
social status in her poem, "The Common Living Dirt" (Piercy 1991, 341):
You can live thousands of years
undressing in the spring your black
body, your red body, your brown body
penetrated by the rain. Here
is the goddess unveiled,
the earth opening her strong thighs.
Authorial intention and the cultural contexts of time and place are important considerations in analyzing landscape images.
WILLA CATHER'S LITERARY FIELDS
219
A woman's geography is found in her writings. Her literaturepresents
her perception of her environment and her relationship to it. Feminist
criticism is the means to understand such perceptions. When reading for
the author's intended or transparentmeaning, we appreciatea new view;
when we read for the hidden intended and unintended meanings, we
gain a fuller view. These viewpoints are importantin knowing a woman's
place.
"O PIONEERS!"
Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1873; she moved to a Nebraska
ranch in the mixed-grass prairiewith her family when she was nine years
old. Two years later the Cathers moved to the town of Red Cloud in
Webster County, Nebraska. In 1884 Red Cloud was a new town in a
corn-growing region, and approximately 10 to 15 percent of its immigrant
population was foreign born (Baltensperger 1985, 74). Cather was especially attracted to Scandinavian, French, German, and Bohemian immigrant women and their cultural arts. She used her childhood memories
of people and places, pioneers on the Nebraska prairie, to create literary
images wherein the "country is hero" (Sergeant 1992, 102). Cather wrote
"O Pioneers!" for her own enjoyment of art, not for money or the entertainment of others (Cather1949).The book was published in 1913 (Cather
1913).
"O Pioneers!" opens with a winter landscape scene. Snow and wind
bluster about buildings in the small Nebraska town of Hanover. Swedish
homesteader John Bergson dies and leaves his only daughter,Alexandra,
to manage a 640-acrefarm and a family that includes her mother and three
brothers. Alexandra revels in her relationship with the seasons and the
soil. Even during a drought, she feels a closeness with the country and
decides to purchase more land, against the wishes of her brothers. She
prospers in spite of difficult circumstances,which include the murder of
her youngest brother. By the time Alexandra is forty years old, she has
one of the richest farms in the region.
In "O Pioneers!"Cather veered from traditional masculinist ideology
that characterizedmid-nineteenth-centuryAmerican literature:man conquers land. If woman had a central role in that literature,she was a docile
woman at home (Dotterer and Bowers 1992). Cather rejected gender-related stereotypes in fiction; she created female individualists rather than
female imitations of male protagonists (Thomas 1990).Although she was
not the first or only writer to do so, Cather portrayed women as active
shapers of the environment.
The women in Cather's writings have an inner strength and are
connected with the land. Cather did not portray a Darwinian prairie
wherein the physically strong persevere (Ostwalt 1990).Physical strength
did not ensure success on her plains; characteristicssuch as imagination
220
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THEGEOGRAPHICAL
and understanding did. When Alexandra carries a lantern into the night,
she is light in a deep, dark country.Difficulties make her more vigorous,
but she remains calm. She is truthful, steadfast, a "triumphantkind of
person" (Cather 1913, 302) who soothes animals and makes people feel
good about themselves.
Gatherportrays harmonious relationships between women and land.
This connection is partially inherent, because women and the earth experience similar seasonal-menstrual rhythms and reach out to and are
responsive to others (Benjamin 1986; Weedon 1987). The connection is
also social, in that women's cultural roles bind them to the land. Gather
recognizes that prairie women were economically and socially central on
the frontier landscape (Gilbert and Guber 1989). The protagonists in "O
Pioneers!" preserve both land and life as they bottle fox grapes and
ground cherries. Alexandra, whose name hails from a Greekword meaning "to defend," insists on keeping the farmsteadwhen her brotherswant
to leave it. The women in Gather's writings understand the strengths of
the land and adapt to the prairie to preserve it, not to conquer it (Thacker
1989). Alexandra maintains close connections with the land through
farming;she loves, manages, daydreams about, and defends her property.
After two years of drought, her garden continues producing sweet potatoes, rhubarb,asparagus, and flowers, while neighboring farmerssell out
and move away. There is no defeat for Alexandra, because there never
was competition. She treats her land as herself because she is part of it
and will one day return to it.
It is also useful to analyze Gather's literary imagery.In "O Pioneers!"
she uses a recurring association of house, home, and homestead in the
prairie landscape that symbolizes women. This image reflects the social
values and cultural contexts in the United States at the time the novel was
written, the early 1900s, and is Gather's prognosis for change in these
values and history. The association is plausible in terms of the accepted
role for women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the percentage of population in the
United States practicing agriculturedeclined as manufacturingand service industries expanded. Prior to this, economic production and reproduction were carried out by men and women largely in the same place:
at home. Nineteenth-century industrialization separated workplace and
home. Factories replaced homes as the place wherein traditional household work such as the making of textiles, foodstuffs, soap, and candles
was accomplished. Carolyn Merchant(1989) terms that period of change
the capitalist ecological revolution, because the expanding global market
economy brought about massive exploitation of resources to benefit
members of the consumption-conscious middle class. During that period
men assumed virtually all responsibility for economic production outside
the home, while reproductive roles were relegated to women, who re-
WILLA CATHER'S LITERARY FIELDS
221
mained at home. Women were discouraged from entering the workplace
by male-established unequal pay structures (Chodorow 1978).Moreover,
the rise of suburban communities distanced women geographically from
central-city workplaces.
Women were accountable for home and all within. Because they spent
more time at home than men did, they were responsible for nurturing
children. Physical care-giving and social education fell to women (Wright
1981), who were essentially responsible for household moral values,
especially those of their children. Ministers preached that inhabitants'
values could be known from the appearance of their homes. Because
homes were under feminine control, a woman could be known by observing her home; it represented her. In this way, a home was an extension of
a woman. A social construct, home continues to be a place imbued with
moral meaning where biosocial needs are met (Tuan1991).
Feminists and psychologists have long recognized the interrelatedness tendencies of women (Chodorow 1978; Gilligan 1982; Hartsock
1983). Women seek connections with people and with landscape. People
and the environment connected in nineteenth-century houses. Children
were conceived and born in the home, and family members met there
after work. In this comparison, a home is likened to a womb; homewoman was the place where relationshipswere createdand strengthened.
Women were home through association: they performed functions
that were home related, and they performed them at home. Although
factories produced multitudes of goods, many farm families lacked the
funds to purchase necessities such as clothing and soap. Rural women
continued to manufacture these goods, although on the frontier the
activity was not considered gainful employment (Myres 1982). Women
were essential in nineteenth-century ruralhouseholds, because they provided essential material substance and conserved scarce financial resources. They grew, preserved, and prepared foods and made cloth and
clothing-activities that occurred in or near their homes. Women and
homes were factories; each was a source of production, each was necessary in frontier settlement.
Frontier-bred Willa Cather was aware of the essential association
between prairiewomen and homes. As a drama and literarycritic,Cather
was familiar with the use of symbolism in artisticworks before she wrote
her own books. On at least one occasion she acknowledged using house
imagery in a story (Cather1949,31). In "TheProfessor's House," she filled
stifling rooms with the trivialities and trappings of material culture. The
house represented contemporary vanities and jealousies, which stood in
stark contrast to unassuming visitors and their simple stories. Cather
(1949) admittedly experimented with form and language; it is not unlikely that she used houses and homes to symbolize women on the prairie
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THEGEOGRAPHICAL
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landscape in order to explicate women's social milieu during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
THE HOUSETHATCATHERBUILT
"OPioneers!"opens with a description of a small railroadtown on the
Nebraska plains (Cather 1913, 3).
One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.
A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of
low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The
dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod;
some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others
as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open
plain. None of them had any appearanceof permanence,and the howling
wind blew under them as well as over them.
This setting influences the charactersand the action that follow. Typical of the backlighting technique (Thacker 1989) in pastoral literature,
wherein setting description supersedes and facilitates characterdescription, Hanover is introduced in detail. Humans do not appear until two
pages later, a technique that makes the landscape itself a characterto be
analyzed.
I assert that the dwellings Cather created to be seen in the mind's eye
are not merely the first evidence of humanity in the story; they are
humanity itself, female humanity. Prairie women were central to the
frontierlandscape, as Catherknew (Gilbertand Guber 1989).The houses
appear front and center to call attention to women. A survey of the
description and location of houses in the novel leads to better understanding of women's condition in society.
Cathercreatedhouses and women thatwere drab (1913,3), "crouching
in a hollow" (15), and "smalland usually tucked away in low places" (19).
Diminutive in social status, those women lacked rights to property and
wealth under English common law (Faragher1979). In marriage the wife
was subservient and secondary to the husband, who directed the farm
and disciplined the family.A woman silently followed her husband, even
when he sold her prenuptial property without consulting her (Dick 1937).
It is likely that many women crouched in fearbecause their husbands beat
and abused them-legal and not uncommon behavior (Weatherford1986).
They may have crouched in loneliness and social neglect as well, because
women were seldom involved in the excitement of town life. Drab,
demanding domestic duties kept women home, out of public life. Figuratively hidden away in homesteads on empty, open plains where all
should have been visible, "you did not see them until you came directly
upon them" (Cather 1913, 19).
FIELDS
WILLACATHER'SLITERARY
223
Patriarchalhierarchyconstrained these women, kept them geographically and socially home, away from political and cultural affairs. "The
homesteads were few and far apart" (Cather 1913, 15). The resulting
isolation represents women's difficulty organizing themselves in a maleestablished political structure. The layout of dwellings in Hanover"haphazard on the tough prairie sod"-further supports this premise.
Male-created and male-frequented towns were polling sites. On voting
day, a holiday, men filled towns with drunken festivities (Faragher1979).
Women were neither invited nor allowed. Men were reluctant to extend
voting rights and associated tokens of male privilege to women. They
daunted women's attempts to organize politically; they facilitated disorder among women.
Male-established social structures made prairie life even more difficult. "[T]hehowling wind blew under [the houses] as well as over them"
(Cather 1913, 3). The prairie winds that tormented and tossed anything
unrooted represented the limited choices and resources available to prairie women who were cut off from familiarpeople and places. Inhabitants
but not legal entities, women had no recourse against laws that allowed
men to separate them forcibly from their families and that awarded
children and dowry to husbands in divorce settlements (Faragher1979).
The drab invisibility of women suggests that they were merely the background against which frontier settlement took place-or so it seems in
Part I of "O Pioneers!"
In Part II, the location and description of houses and women change.
Sixteen years have passed since Alexandra's father died and left her in
charge of the family property.Cather does not cover the struggles during
that interval, but the changed conditions of the homestead clearly convey
Alexandra's triumph. Her success is revealed by Cather's portrayalof the
house from the perspective of riders in a wagon. They drove "toward a
big white house that stood on a hill, several miles across the fields"
(Cather 1913, 83).
Significantly,this house is big-Cather describes it as big twice in one
paragraph-and it stands on a hill. A woman has asserted herself on the
landscape! No longer low in status or insufficient in function, she is in the
middle of the frontier situation, as Cather understood her to be (Gilbert
and Guber 1989).Not only is the woman standing ratherthan crouching,
but also she has achieved even higher status because she is on a hill.
Perhaps Cather acknowledges that women's status was higher on the
plains than in the East, where women had less effect on socioeconomic
structures.
On the prairie women are no longer hidden from public view; neighbors see and revere them. People see that women are socially productive
and attractively beneficial. Houses and women are more numerous and
"gayly painted" (Cather 1913, 75). No longer drab and temporary look-
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THEGEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
ing, women as houses are beautiful and fruitful. Womenhave established
their identities and brought order to a previously haphazard scene:
"There is something individual about the great farm, a most unusual
trimness and care for detail" (Cather 1913, 83).
It is important to consider location of houses and women because
space is essential in interpreting social history. In this construct, the
meaning and use of space elucidate the status and condition of women.
Conventionally, homesteads in traditional societies agglomerated for
defense purposes in nucleated villages surrounded by farm fields. In "O
Pioneers!"Gatherplaced Alexandra'shouse in the midst of her other farm
buildings. At this microscale, Alexandra's house on the hill symbolizes a
woman's confidence in her ability to provide for her household; she is
source of social security and protection.
During the nineteenth century the independent homestead embodied
basic American ideals: self-sufficiency,order,attractiveness,culture, morality, stability, and permanence. Alexandra's finely arranged and comfortablehomestead celebrateswomen's sense of order and independence.
Gather depicts a symmetrically laid out farm. The significance of this
description is in the Greek root of the word symmetry, which means
commensurate. The connotation here is that all parts of the farm are
related proportionatelyto each other and to the whole. This arrangement
exemplifies the feminine idea of connectivity, in which women pursue
relationships with people and places in their environment.
When Gathersituated Alexandra's lone house on a hill, she lauded the
high moral value of prairie women. In contrast with the assumption that
settlement and nation-building were male privileges, Gather portrayed
women as the solid, stable base for a growing nation.
Even though Alexandra's homestead was far distant from others, on
her property it was the focus of sheds and outbuildings. This arrangement
symbolizes the political and social organization of women. They gathered
and prevailed in midst of seemingly overwhelming winds, that is, the
male political systems. When Gatherwrote "OPioneers!"only nine states
had granted women full voting privileges; social equality had not yet
occurred.Gatheris making a hopeful statement about the positive future
of women's rights when she portrays women as productive, respected,
and connected with other women. She is saying that women as a group
will enjoy higher privilege and status.
What empowered a fictional woman to overcome constraining social
structures and elevate herself to a higher status? Gatherasserts that "the
great fact was the land itself" (Cather 1913, 15). Just as women draw
meanings and power from the landscape, fictional landscapes are the
origin of power and change in prairie literature. Alexandra owns and
works her land. She adjusts to and lives by the rhythms of nature. She
perseveres during drought, storm, and fire. Womensucceed because they
WILLA CATHER'S LITERARY FIELDS
225
live in harmony with the land; women connect with ratherthan conquer
the environment.
Through the juxtaposition of houses and plains Gather created descriptivelandscapeswherein humans and the environmentinteract.House
and home invariably join earth to sky, human to earth, human to human.
In the case of sod houses that crouched on the prairie, the connection is
even more apparent. Soddies were constructed from thick blocks of soil
and grass. Usually built by the impoverished or most recent settlers, they
were considered practical but temporary; their solid walls protected
inhabitants from extreme heat and cold but enticed snakes and burrowing
animals (Nelson 1986).In this house-image, sky, earth, and creaturesmeet
in women.
"Most of [the houses] were built of the sod itself, and were only the
unescapable ground in another form" (Cather 1913, 19). This passage is
a reminder that prairie women knew they were figuratively, and would
become literally, dust of the earth (Daiches 1951). Gather describes the
country as "fortunate"that it would "receivehearts like Alexandra's into
its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn,
in the shining eyes of youth!" (1913, 309). Women would eventually be
sustenance for the very earth from which they humbly sustained their
households. The connection between women and the earth is further
emphasized by Gather's comment, "Alexandra'shouse is the big out-ofdoors" (84);by extension women and homes are the earth.
Houses also symbolize feminine connections between humans. Geraniums and fuchsias brighten windowsills of the houses in "O Pioneers!"
The sharing of flower cuttings was a link between people and places
(Fairbanks 1986; Weatherford 1986). Within a house these links were
forged.
Alexandra's homestead looks like a tiny village, with sheds and buildings grouped about the main house. The physical proximity and relatedness of the buildings mimic the social cohesiveness of women. So important
is the human connection that Alexandra employs three immigrants to
work in her kitchen just "to hear them giggle" and to keep her company.
The few scenes that take place indoors involve several people: the nuclear
family meets in council; the extended family shares dinner;and neighbors
visit. Veryseldom is anyone alone in Gather'shouses; they are the origins
of feminine connections.
Gather's houses elucidate her feelings about immigrants. In her opening description of Hanover, some of the houses "looked as if they had
been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by
themselves." In my interpretation, these houses are female European
immigrants. Germans, Swedes, and Czechs arrived on the prairies after
several weeks of grueling travel by ship and train. Until soddies or
dugouts were constructed, they lived in tents that were constantly buf-
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THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
feted by winds. It is thus understandable that the structures looked
hastily put together.
Many immigrants had never been farmersand were unaccustomed to
plains farming. Some were skilled in crafts that counted for naught on
the plains. Immigrantwomen were far fromtheir friends and families and
had no hope of returninghome. Unfamiliar foods, language, and terrains
had a disorienting effect on these women, who "clustered"on the tableland (Cather 1913, 3). Geographers have noted that rural settlement
tended to be homogeneous based on wealth and social status;immigrants
settled according to ethnicity (Zelinsky 1973).Gatherclusters immigrant
women to reflect her experience with Scandinavian and Bohemian immigrants in Nebraska.
Gather sympathizes with immigrants' plight in "O Pioneers!," and
furthermore she uses house imagery to emphasize the industrious and
moralnatureof femaleimmigrants.Swedish immigrantAlexandraBergson
first lives in a low log house, because her mother will not live in a sod
house (Cather 1913, 29). Mrs. Bergson prefers logs to sod; the family
works hard to purchase logs. Although both sod and log homes were
temporary structures,log houses were more civilized (Wright1981).
Gather showed that far from being amoral, immigrant women were
industrious, were cultured, and appreciated beautiful things. Alexandra's new house on the hill has several rooms that are papered, carpeted,
and furnished (Cather 1913, 83). Swedish heirlooms gracing the sitting
room are a reminder that immigrantsbrought their cultural heritage with
them and that women perpetuate their heritage (Squire1993).The dining
room is filled with varnished wood, bright glass, and china; guest rooms
contain fancy candlesticks and jars. Alexandra "liked plain things herself" (Cather 1913, 97), but she accommodates her guests' tastes. Guests
were probably immigrants themselves; when they saw tokens of prosperity in Alexandra's house, they were reassured that they could be productive, successful citizens.
Such signs of wealth may be construed to indicate growing materialism (Murphy 1984), especially in Alexandra. However, it is not unlikely
that Gather implies that female immigrants will not be an economic
burden on Americansociety and that immigrantsarenot unsavory.Gather
once wrote that she preferred immigrant women in Nebraska to "traveled" people in Virginia and Washington and that "their words counted
extra" (Slote 1966, 448). Some may assert that immigrants had little hope
in the United States, but I think Gatherbelieved that immigrants would
persevere and advance in status.
Alexandra has a recurring dream in which a strong man lifts and
carries her across the fields to her home. At first she chides herself for
imagining such a fantasy (Cather 1913, 206), but she eventually accepts
the dream and finds comfort in it (282). In these episodes, Alexandra is
WILLACATHER'SLITERARYFIELDS
227
carried figuratively to her land and home, both of which are extensions
of herself. She does not recognize her self-sufficiency and self-identity.As
she interacts with the prairie environment, she learns that relationship
with the land is a source of strength. Open plains open her soul; she
becomes self-aware. Nature's rhythms are her rhythms. She belongs to
the land (Cather 1913, 307). To be troubled by illusory dreams no more,
Alexandra finds a permanent home within herself. When the saga closes,
Alexandra comments that she feels peaceful and free when she is home.
A woman has drawn meaning and power from landscape and has freed
herself from social constraints.
CONCLUSION
Feminist criticism is a method for interpreting the geography of a
literary setting. The method celebrates women's subjective experience
with landscapes and includes analysis of recurring landscape symbols.
Female-written literary settings reveal women's perception and conceptualization of space. These conceptualizations may be transparent or
metaphorical landscape images that symbolize women and their interaction with the social and natural environments.
Of the many symbols on Gather's prairie landscape, houses, homes,
and homesteads merit special attention. She creates intriguing houses in
a dynamic landscape. Her houses are prairiewomen who connect people
and environment. These women and houses shelter the daydreamers and
the weary, who reach for stars while founded in firm prairie sod. Integrated into the landscape, houses and women were essential to prairie
settlement. Cooperative land-human relationships empowered woman
to overcome traditional patriarchal structures and effect changes on
landscape. Gather's houses are the source and substance of early-twentieth-century women's self-awareness and changing roles. When a woman
comes home she comes to herself, and there she finds greatest freedom.
Woman is home.
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