It seems certain, as in the original carving the woman is shown with a
burden on her head and in the act of driving a calf before her, that she
is a representative of the peasant class. In the Korea at the present
day, women of the lower orders, although they adopt a jacket which
covers their arms and shoulders, wear so short an one that as there is
no garment beneath it leaves their breasts quite bare. Such an arrangement would obviously facilitate the nursing of children,
and this fact has been advanced as the reason for its adoption. Still
it may be merely a fashion such as some women, at the other end of the
social scale, once adopted in our non-tropical country. In the time of
James I of England, the noble ladies, while they wore an exaggerated
ruff round their necks, nevertheless had their dresses cut away from
just below it almost to their waists.
