The Nation: A GALLERY OF AMERICAN WOMEN

Since time immemorial poets and novelists have celebrated the diversity of woman, and U.S. society provides as varied an opportunity for richly individual life-styles and attitudes as any the world has known. Here are nine portraits of contemporary U.S. women and their views on why they live and work and love as they do. They do not, of course, begin to exhaust the possibilities, but they do indicate the range at a time of questioning of familiar roles and traditional assumptions.

Marcia Heuber's world is one of seasons and crops, dawn-to-dusk farm chores, the...