Marlene Wagman-Geller

          While viewing the Palatial Chateau Ferrilres outside Paris, Wilhelm I commented, “Kings couldn’t afford this. It could only belong to a Rothschild!” The anecdote illustrates the wealth of the family whose coffers surpass that of royalty. In a move that shocked her milieu, one of the dynasty’s daughters turned her back on her rarified life seduced by a siren song.

(Being a great photojournalist is) “a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you.” –Lee Miller 

Farleys House & Gallery (opened 2006) 

East Sussex, England 

William Shakespeare in his play As You Like It wrote, “One man in his time plays many parts….” And one woman who played many parts was Lee Miller whose intrepid spirit lives on in her country retreat, a music box that recalls its chatelaine and the era of surrealism is a Sussex setting.   

Louisa May Alcott

“I would rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.”—Louisa May Alcott

Some of America’s greatest authors, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau, slumber in Sleepy Hollow, a Concord cemetery. A notable grave belongs to the mother of young adult fiction, Louisa May Alcott. If, in Spoon River Anthology fashion, Louisa spoke from the afterlife, her story would involve her family, immortalized in her novel, Little Women.

Casa Guidi (opened 1995)

Florence, Italy

An immortal sonnet begins, “How do I love thee?/Let me count the ways.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s grande amore was her husband, Robert, and their Florence home. To tread the halls of the literary couple, take a gondola ride to Casa Guidi.

Wrong for Women

Sarah Orne Jewett

“Love isn’t blind; it’s only love that sees.”—Sarah Orne Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett House (opened 1931)

Sarah Orne Jewett observed, “We unconsciously catch the tone of every house in which we live.” The quotation rang true for the author, whose ancestral home formed the bedrock of her soul. To catch the author’s tone, travel to the Sarah Orne Jewett House.

Lillian Nordica

“People have voices equal to mine, plenty have talents equal to mine; but I have worked.”

 —Lillian Nordica  

Opera’s heroines storm across the stage, howling anguish born from betrayal, jealousy, vengeance. In a nod to life imitating art, Lillian Nordica’s days were as tempestuous as those of the women she portrayed. To understand the saga of the Yankee diva, peek behind the curtain at the Nordica Homestead Museum.

Lee Krasner

“I don’t feel I sacrificed myself.”—Lee Krasner

The Pollock-Krasner House (opened 1988)

       A well-known trope postulates, “Behind every great man is a great woman.” History tends to forget these ladies, as great men can be reluctant to provide spousal credit. Ultimately, the artist formerly known as Mrs. Pollock became Lee Krasner. To experience Lee’s paint-bedecked studio, follow the turpentine fumes to The Pollock-Krasner House.

“We are coming down from our pedestals and up from the laundry room.”

       No domestic goddess of today could hold a candle to the 1950s Happy Days sitcom mom, Mrs. Cunningham, whose advice could slay any crisis. She would have been appalled with the 1980s Roseanne Barr who boasted, “As a housewife, I feel that if the kids are still alive when my husband gets home from work, then hey, I’ve done my job.” Bella Abzug was more Roseanne than Mrs. C. as she blazed a fiery trail.

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”

     From the trenches of France in 1920, Hugh Lofting wrote to his sons about a British physician, John Doolittle. Despite the apathetic-sounding surname, the doctor possessed the most remarkable gift: he could talk to animals. The letters transformed to a beloved children’s classic and inspired one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the twentieth century.

Eliza Jumel

“Vice Queen of the United States” (How Eliza Jumel introduced herself in Paris)

Morris- Jumel Mansion (opened 1904)

            If walls could indeed talk, Manhattan’s ’s oldest remaining home would provide a tantalizing tale. And one would be of Eliza Jumel who defeated Aaron Burr in a duel. To experience the historic house that doubled as a nineteenth-century soap opera, head over to the Morris- Jumel Mansion.

Alice Paul

“The thing I think that was the most useful thing I ever did, was having

a part in getting the vote for all the women.”–Alice Paul

Alice Paul Institute (Paulsdale) (opened 2002)

Which historic figure ended up behind bars several times for acts of civil disobedience and protested through fasting? The answer is not only the dhoti-clad Hindu Mohandas Gandhi; it is also the Victorian-garbed Quaker Alice Paul. To experience the home of the firebrand, make your way to her former farm, Paulsdale.