In a dystopian society, a young widow is placed in a holding facility to spend her days learning home economics until she's chosen to be the wife of a new man.

A working-class mother has held only one hope for her entire life: that one day, her daughter would marry well and wealthy, and take care of her in her old age. When her daughter reveals that the man she loves is not wealthy, her mother's dreams of rest are dashed and divided.

Two sisters, both Sociology professors, find themselves summering husbandless in their rickety childhood home with their bastion of six children, their ornery mother, and their paralyzed father. They swap between stories of their upbringing and their present task of preparing for a fatal hurricane which will challenge their quaint way of life.

In the early 20th century, after the death of her parents, a young woman immigrates from Constantinople to America to live with her three older half-sisters—but their plans for her may not be what she desires.

A busy maid in Harlem has been saving money for months to buy tickets for a boat ride. When there is a sudden threat to her long-awaited excursion, she will stop at nothing get on the boat.

A self-reliant but lonely woman becomes excited by the incidental visit of two boys in her apartment. When she unwisely lends them her long-buried trust and kindness, she quickly regrets it.

When the Great Depression hits a well-to-do family, an eighteen-year-old girl works at a ranch to put herself through college, enduring the difficulty of the work while also enjoying being away from the stifling environment of her home.

A middle-aged woman living in the suburbs reflects on three moments in her life that have made her question her understanding of love and sexuality — meeting an expectation-defying girl in her youth, attending a bodybuilding competition with her family, and watching her hairdresser transform into a different person.

Two women, once the closest of childhood friends, chart diametrically opposite courses through life when scandal drives them apart. Thirty years later, a chance reunion prompts one of them to question everything.

Following a conversation with a traveling repairman about his life on the road, a woman with a gift for growing flowers grapples with her femininity and her desire for something more than a mundane life as the wife of a farmer.