Frontier women disarmed male awkwardness by absorbing the social cost themselves.

Evidence

I did not care in the least about myself. I could rough it, and enjoy doing so, but I was very sorry for the young men, who, I knew, would be much embarrassed by the sudden appearance of a lady for an indefinite time. But the difficulty had to be faced, and I walked in and took them by surprise as they were sitting smoking by the fire in the living room, which was dismantled, unswept, and wretched looking. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 220

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s notes on women’s labor and role expectations in the nineteenth-century West, e.g. A Midwife’s Tale.