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Objective
The purpose of this lesson is to have students look at several aspects of the debate about women and bicycles in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Students should be able to use the three major issues of women and sports--physical capacities, propriety, and femininity--in analyzing positions. The primary source for the material in the debate comes from Robert A. Smith's A Social History of the Bicycle (New York: American Heritage Press, 1972).
Method
Students should be divided into groups and given the following exercise on the debate over women bicyclists. For each point, arguments are given pro and con. Students should classify each statement based on the themes the argument most clearly fits. Then students should make "P" for those arguments they see as "possibly valid" for the time and "A" for those they see as "artificial" and not really valid. At the end of the exercise, each group reports to the rest of the class.
Summary Points
The teacher may want to use the John Galsworthy quotation (under number 8) as a summary to see whether students would agree with his view that bicycling brought about "the emancipation of women." Other summarizing questions might include the following:
- How did the restrictions on women shape the debate?
- Was bicycling a "sport" or a mode of transportation that women could control?
- Does the debate illustrate class bias concerning women and their economic status?
- What restrictions are there on women's movement today?
Exercise
The following arguments form the debate over whether women should take up bicycling. Your group's task is to decide which arguments use the concepts of 1) physical capacity, 2) propriety--what is "proper" for women, and 3) femininity. Your group should also mark "P" for possibly valid arguments and "A" for artificial arguments that seem invalid.
1. Is it healthy for women to ride bicycles?
- Women need to quit staying indoors and should go into the open air.
- It will bring "on every cheek a natural bloom, lips that are indeed cherry ripe," "arms rounded and muscular, limbs straight and strong," and "a healthy tone to the voice, a sparkle in the eye." (Harper's Bazar, 1896)
- Women are taking too many pills and tonics and becoming neurotic; their "nervous force was wearing out." (a New York doctor)
- They are physically capable of exercise. Mrs. A. E. Rhinehart of Denver was on record as having ridden 17,152 miles in 1896 including 116 "centuries." (A "century" is a one hundred mile ride completed in one day)
- Cycling "heats the blood" and will "lead to certain complaints." (Advertisement for Payne's Celery Tonic)
- The bicycle destroys "feminine symmetry and poise" and is a "disturber of internal organs." (Margaret Lindley)
- Women would develop muscular legs or develop "bicycle eye," a condition supposedly resulting from raising the eyes when the head was lowered in a riding position.
- A woman may bicycle on the flat but should not "over-exert herself by riding too long a time, or too fast, or up too steep hills." Women are not capable of sustained exercise. (a New York doctor)
2. Should women spend more time outside of the home bicycling?
- "Bicycles are better matchmakers than mothers; young women will meet prospective suitors." (New York Herald)
- A woman will become "mistress of herself . . . a rational, useful being restored to health and sanity." (Cosmopolitan, 1895)
Bicycles would lead women to make an "unseemly display" of themselves.
Women will neglect the home as the following anonymous poem suggests:
Where once I heard her voice in song I hear it now insist,
That "Holding tight to handlebars will strain the stoutest wrist."
Where once she played a light guitar she now proclaims in ire
That only "Dingbat tires are good" and sneers at single tires.
Where once she spoke in charming ways of her way to build a cake
She orates on the graceful ease she coasts without a brake.
Of spokes and bloomers, sprockets, chains, of pedals and the like
My better half will talk for hours since she has bought a bike.
3. Can a woman follow the rules of polite society and still bicycle?
- "People of real or acquired refinements would not act differently on a bicycle than they would in a drawing room." (Harper's Weekly)
- New situations would arise, forcing women, for example, to decide whether to ask for help from strange gentlemen to whom they had not been properly introduced.
4. Would women wear suitable clothing if they bicycled?
- The American Lady Corset Company claimed women could wear a corset biking and offered one hundred dollars of free bicycle insurance with every biking corset sold.
- Biking would encourage the discarding of the "murderous corset" which damaged women's internal organs. (Dr. Van Hock)
- If they would wear their regular clothes, lightly boned corsets, and put weights in the bottoms of their skirts to keep them from flying up and wear knickerbockers underneath their petticoats. (Grace Dinson)
- Women could wear bloomers, a pair of loose pants.
- Women have to be properly dressed in public, which includes a corset, several petticoats, a hat, gloves and a long skirt which hides the ankle.
- Women are just trying to dress as men in trousers. The mayor of Chattanooga proposed an ordinance outlawing bloomers as a "menace to the peace and good morals of the male residents of the city."
- A Norwich, New York group of men took the following Anti-Bloomer Brigade Oath: "I hereby agree to refrain from associating with any young ladies who adopt bloomer cycling costumes and pledge myself to use all honorable means to render such costumes unpopular in the community where I reside."
5. Can women of any age, marital status, or occupation ride a bicycle?
- Spinsters particularly should be encouraged to bike so that, as one doctor put it, "They would not become prey to mental yearnings and dissatisfaction."
- Even widows could order special "mourning bikes" in black.
- Women's Christian Temperance Union leader Frances E. Willard wrote a book on her experiences at age fifty-three called How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle.
- The bicycle, a new form of technology, threatened the dignity of middle-aged women and particularly widows.
- Women in leadership positions should not be seen bicycling. Dr. A. W. Reimer of the College Point School stated:
It is not the proper thing for ladies to ride the bicycle. They wear skirts, of course, but if we don't stop them now they will want to be in style with New York women and wear bloomers. Then how would our schoolrooms look with the lady teachers parading about among the girls and boys wearing bloomers. They might as well wear men's trousers. I suppose it will come to that, but we are determined to stop our teachers in time, before they go that far.
6. Is it more suitable for women to ride a tandem bicycle than a single one?
- "You'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two." (line from a popular song of the day, "Daisey, Daisey")
- The young lady should always sit in front so that the more powerful male could handle the pedaling. The lady's part of the bike should be dropped down low enough in front, however, so that the male can see and steer.
- If no men are available, two women on a tandem bicycle "would be an invitation to every rude man to make insulting remarks of an improper nature." (Minneapolis Tribune)
- Women should ride their own bikes. Bicycling gives women a "feeling of freedom and self reliance." (Susan B. Anthony)
7. Can "proper" courtships be maintained if bicycles are used?
- Courtships would continue as usual, as the following poem suggests:
O, the knights of olden time
Were brave and strong and true,
And they loved their faithful steeds,
My wheel, as I love you.
And swiftly forth they rode,
Some knightly deed to do
To win their ladies' praise,
And for her hand to sue.
Knight of the wheel am I,
My lady's eyes are blue.
I kneel to kiss her hand;
She whispers, "I'll be true."
- No proper young lady would go off without a chaperone. Since older women could not keep up with a younger couple, loose morals would result from the couple being unsupervised.
8. Would biking, finally, make women's lives better?
- Women's sphere would be expanded, as this poem suggests:
The maiden with her wheel of old
Sat by the fire to spin,
While lightly through her careful hold
The flax slid out and in.
Today her distaff, rock and reel
Far out of sight are hurled
And now the maiden with her wheel
Goes spinning round the world.
- The bicycle helped to create a "new" woman:
The bicycle . . . has been responsible for more movement in manners and morals than anything since Charles the Second. Under its influence, wholly or in part, have wilted chaperones, long and narrow skirts, tight corsets, hair that would come down, black stockings, thick ankles, large hats, prudery and fear of the dark; under its influence, wholly or in part, have blossomed weekends, strong nerves, strong legs, strong language, knickers, knowledge of make and shape, knowledge of woods and pastures, equality of sex, good digestion and professional occupation--in four words, the emancipation of women.
--John Galsworthy
- The "unfettered liberty" of bicycling would "intoxicate" women to commit immoral acts. Some towns outlawed women bicyclists.
- "Bicycling by women has helped more than any other media to swell the ranks of reckless girls who finally drift into the standing army of outcast women in the United States." (Women's Rescue League)
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