The outbreak of the First World War led to a massive social, cultural, and economic shift in work dynamics, both in Europe and the United States. Governments on both sides of the ocean appealed (in particular, to women) many of whom left their live-in positions as domestic workers to find work in plants and factories.

To serve one’s country, or one’s employer? Such a delicate, if urgent question challenged an essential covenant linking service to sacrifice. 

This portrait of a female “chatelaine”, her apron tethered by suspenders, reflects the start of a changing narrative: posed outside the kitchen, she’s ready for what’s next: a sentinel sooner than a stereotype.

The title is taken from the Yeats poem about the 1916 Easter Rebellion, “terrible beauty” a reference to the Irish battle for Independence from Britain. That it would take a war for these women to begin to find their own independence was at once unfortunate and long overdue.

The soul, wrote Emily Dickinson, selects her own society.