Pioneer frontier wives regarded all courtesy and gentleness as sinful laziness.

Evidence

I can say less. She looks like one of the English poor women of our childhoodlean, clean, toothless, and speaks, like some of them, in a piping, discontented voice, which seems to convey a personal reproach. All her waking hours are spent in a large sun-bonnet. She is never idle for one minute, is severe and hard, and despises everything but work. I think she suffers from her husband’s shiftlessness. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 66

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the austerity-as-virtue and hardscrabble women portraits in frontier memoirs like A Midwife’s Tale’s Martha Ballard world.

Related

• Backcountry Western men insisted on courteous respect toward women. (similarity 0.79)
• Frontier respect for a woman hinged on proven wilderness skill, not gender (similarity 0.78)