The exhibition begins indoors, with portraits that were a shock because they captured women in the privacy of their homes, lost in reverie (Monet's "Madame Louis Joachim Gaudibert, " 1868) or engaged in quotidian rituals like removing a glove (Charles Carolus-Duran's "The Lady With the Glove, " 1869).

WSJ: A Rustling Theater of the Self | Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity | Metropolitan Museum of Art | By Laura Jacobs