This book was written in conjunction with a symposium that accompanied the 1994 exhibition entitled Adriaen Van Ostade: Etchings of Peasant Life in Holland's Golden Age. The publication includes several scholarly essays that discuss issues of women and peasants in 17th-century Dutch art, as well as a memoir by S. William Pelletier, director of the Institute for Natural Products Research at the University of Georgia, on his collection of prints by Van Ostade. Scholars covered the broad issue of domesticity as well as the underlying themes of privacy and civility throughout the Dutch works of that period. The characterization of the peasant as a parent and cultural entity is also discussed. Scholars emphasized the portrayal of the Dutch peasant as the "other" in the country's social structure rather than as a positive or negative figure in 17th-century art.