Bachelor self-sufficiency in the wilderness produced enviable domestic order

Evidence

His house, for order and neatness, and a sort of sprightliness of cleanlinessthe comfort of cleanliness without its severityis a pattern to all women, while the clear eyes and manly self-respect which the habit of total abstinence gives in this country are a pattern to all men. He cooked me a splendid dinner, with good tea. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 218

Categorization

• FICTION: Rare late-19th-century claim that a bachelor’s cleanliness is ‘a pattern to all women’ — reversing the era’s assumption that domestic order is a woman’s province.