Husbands' and wives' perceptions differed too: men were more likely to stress progress along the trail and the danger of Indian attack, women to see the many graves along the route and regard the Indians as helpful guides and resources. Women also clung to their starched aprons and petticoats: ""their sense of social role and sexual identity"" (to maintain, Schlissel suggests, ""the careful balances that had been worked out between husbands and wives in rural communities"").
Many were young, many were pregnant, all relied upon the presence of other women to make ""a social fabric of their lives on the trail."" Other women were important not simply in aiding in the strenuous chores (from the typical women's tasks of baking or caring for children to the men's tasks that often fell to them) they also helped in such basic ways as using their wide skirts to curtain other women as they performed their bodily functions, creating a rare and elusive privacy. Of the 96 diarists, only two were single. OH LET US NOT GO."" Such marked reluctance was a common response among women who faced the journey westward, Schlissel (Women's Studies, Brooklyn College) convincingly demonstrates from her study of 96 diaries and several exchanges of letters the men made the decision, the women went along primarily to hold their families together.
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