Avis is a nineteenth-century painter who strives to keep herself free of marriage and entanglements. Although Avis declares and her fiance agrees that she must not "resign my profession as an artist," the reality greets her with their first house. Through her life, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps describes the struggle of a woman to be wife, mother, and artist. How modern is the "modern man" and how much do women's roles ever change? This book, written more than one hundred years ago, will still seem very real to many women today.
