It's important to keep in mind the prevailing attitudes of the time as well. Exposure to the general public gaze was supposed to be an intrusive hardship respectable women should be spared, through the protective care of their family members. Married women were to be protected by their husbands, who should no better than to bring inaapropriate visitors into the family circle, and to a lesser extent by other (mostly male, and also older female) family members--in-laws and blood relatives both. Unmarried ones were to be protected by parents or parent-surrogates, as well as their brothers and older female relatives.

Availability to the public gaze and to indiscriminate public contact was felt to signal sexual availability to some extent. A respectable female should not be subjected to "insult", but confusion as to her respectability could result from inappropriate public exposure--partly being seen in situations which might lead people (mostly male) to misundestand her availability, but also as the result of failing to show the proper degree of reserve in neutral situations--etiquette books of the era emphasize this is discussing how women should behave when in company. Stashower notes that John Anderson, Mary Rogers's employer, had to carefully promise her mother that not only would the girl never be left alone in the store (which appears to have sold newspapers, magazines, and books as well as tobacco products--it was a big hangout for literary New York), but that she would be escorted to and from work--he was expected to behave as a surrogate male family member to a certain extent.