Isabella Bird’s travels through the rugged interior of Rocky Mountain territory in 1873 were characterized not by a search for standard tourist comforts, but by an overt, self-proclaimed aversion to domestic tranquility. While her contemporaries in England settled into predictable social routines, Bird sought out the most arduous terrains, writing in her letters that the predictable rhythms of home life made her feel 'physically stifled.' In her journals, she explicitly described herself as 'constitutionally restless,' a trait that drove her to ride horseback through blizzards and camp in open canyons. This internal restlessness was not a symptom of anxiety, but rather a profound craving for physical challenge. Although some biographers have retroactively labeled her as reckless, Bird’s own accounts reveal a woman who planned her routes with careful deliberation, even if those routes led directly into the most uninhabited corners of the American West.
Based on the passage, Isabella Bird explicitly characterized herself as having which of the following traits?
- AA reckless attitude toward planning her travel routes
- A constitutional restlessness that drove her to seek physical challengesAnswer
- CAn anxious temperament that made her fear domestic environments
- DA permanent resentment toward the social expectations of her English contemporaries