Vrouw

So the Vrouws, in a minuet, solemnly prance Like a bear, at a fair, that is tutor'd to dance.

Those whose rank excluded them from a participation in the town deliberations drew closer to their firesides; the vrouws, both old and young, edged their seats nigher to each other[…]

The Dutch vrouwen controlled their households as before, and governed their husbands with silken threads.

One by one those who had come to jeer slipped away, Pieter van der Byl murmuring incoherently of the hot sun and van der Heyden of the chilly evening, until finally Huysing turned abruptly from the pier and strode away, with a curt order to the waiting slaves to carry the vrouwen back to Zee Straat.

[…] thrifty Dutch burghers and vrouwen are busy about town and home; […]

But really I have never heard that the up-country vrouwen were in such a violent hurry for baftas and punjums but what the ox-wagons and local stores there could keep them supplied.