Frontier women with absent husbands lived alone in danger without fear

Evidence

After riding thirty miles I saw a light a little way from the track, and found it to be the cabin of the daughter of the pleasant people with whom I had spent the previous night. Her husband had gone to the Plains, yet she, with two infant children, was living there in perfect security. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 189

Categorization

• FICTION: A woman keeping house with two infants while her husband is away, taking in pedlars for shelter, is a ready-made scene of quiet frontier courage.
• XREF: connects to: High-altitude solitude offers Victorian women a reprieve from human volatility. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 117; Frontier women feared losing husbands to mountain journeys with household ruin following. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 74