Now, if you want to write something I would direct you to the chapter on Nantucket in The Heart Of The Ocean. There is a description of the women's standing in a community where their men were gone for years at a time. they became the legal and social center of the families. It was the women who ran the household and ran the business of the family. When the men came home for the few months between voyages they would essentially follow the women around as they went about the errands that kept house and home together.

And the women apparently turned to opium and physical means to cope with the loneliness. In one house, hidden in the chimney, was found an opium bottle and a six inch plaster dildo.