Therefore, her life was quite boring, with nothing to do, really nothing。 She read book sometimes, just for relax, to kill meaningless time, I think, because all her knowledge of life extended to that little conventional round of society of which she was not----but longed to be----a member。 

From the above analysis, we could see, compared with Carrie, both women were strictly bounded to their families。 The distinction is that Minnie labored as a housewife, which was more passive。 She was physically bounded by the heavy housework and mentally greatly influenced by her husband。 Whereas Julia can be considered as the one who was more positively related to the family。 Anyway, she didn’t have to do housework all day long。 All her relations with the family were her benefits from the marriage as well as her strict “government” over everyone in the family。 But the fact is that whether they are positively or negatively connected to their families, we can not deny that they relied on family to live and most of their social activities were within the family circle。