Gauntlet

This is part of the dynamic of historic gender roles in romance, in which women have been the courted and men the courters — since he is presumed to be the stronger, more dominant partner and she the gatekeeper of virtue, he does all the risking and she does all the waiting around for him to work up the guts. So a woman, unfairly, was unable to invite a man for a date but she (also unfairly) retained all the power to humiliate undesirables who would ask her. There’s some crazy stuff that may or may not derive from evolutionary imperatives there, but essentially men were expected to suffer the risks and reap the rewards of being aggressive in courtship while women were expected to look pretty and cross their fingers that a suitable offer would come along (and cross their legs for a good while after it did). It was in many ways a condescending model, too, of course, as I think much gentlemanly behaviour was — the person who was naturally deemed to be superior was the one honour-bound to attempt to make the weaker, inferior party comfortable (laying jackets over mud-puddles, holding doors, picking up cheques, etc.). And all that.