Literal meaning.

This notion has been expressed in a variety of forms by numerous people over the ages, all of them men of course. The proper proverbial place for a woman is usually expressed as ‘the home’ but is and has been also said to be ‘the family’ and ‘the kitchen’.

The ancient Greeks got in there first. The playwright Aeschylus, in Seven Against Thebes, 467 B.C., wrote: