Gender Roles & The Early Bicycles - Discussion Thread

This thread may belong in a different heading, apologies if anyone gets irritated, but I am primarily interested in early (pre 30's) bicycle tradition.

I'm doing some research / writing / thinking on the subject of the evolution of gender roles according to bicycles.

My inner dialogue starts with the early tandem bicycles with seat for a chaperone, extending to the rear steer courting tandem as a slightly more risque means of travel and then eventually extending to the unescorted woman riding her bicycle as she sees fit.


I have anecdotal info, advertisements, various story publications etc.

Any particularly telling documents lurking in the collections of any other readers out there?

This may be of assistance..

http://archive.org/stream/outofdoorlibrary00sarg#page/208/mode/2up

I like this one - Tillie the terrible swede



http://www.reminisce.com/1930s/tillie-the-terrible-swede/

Try some of these..

References

1 The exhibition was described in “The Big Bicycle Show at the Garden,” New York Sunday World, 19 January 1896, p. 19. Click footnote numbered link to return to article

2 Irving A. Leonard, When Bikehood was in Flower, (Seven Palms Press, 1983).

3 “Champion of Her Sex,” New York Sunday World, 2 February 1896, p. 10.

4 In some cases the larger wheel was the rear wheel.

5 “A Blessing for Women,” The Bearings, 5 September 1895.

6 Sarah Gordon in Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender, and Culture in Modern America, Philip Scranton, Editor (Routledge, 2001), p.25.

7 “A Whirl ‘Round the World,” Omaha World Herald, 25 August 1895, p. 5.

8 Item, Arizona Daily Gazette, 16 June 1895.

9 Sarah Gordon in Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender, and Culture in Modern America, Philip Scranton, Editor (Routledge, 2001), p. 26.

10 “Taking Chances,” Iowa State Register, 28 August 1895.

11 “Woman and Her Bicycle,” Chicago Daily News, 17 October 1894, p. 8.

12 Quoted in Lynn Sherr, Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words (Times Books, 1995), p. 196.

13 “The First New Woman,” The Washington Post, 11 August 1895, p. 20.

14 “Mrs. Stanton Likes Bloomers,” Rocky Mountain News, 11 August 1895.

15 “Bloomers Abhorred,” Iowa State Register, 7 September 1895.

16 “They Don’t Like Bloomers,” Chicago Sunday Times-Herald, 8 September 1895.

17 “They Don’t Like Bloomers,” Chicago Sunday Times-Herald, 8 September 1895.

18 Omaha World-Herald, 25 August 1895.

19 San Francisco Chronicle, 1 April 1895.

20 Robert A. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, (McGraw Hill, 1972), p. 76.

21 Frances Willard, A Wheel Within a Wheel: A Woman’s Quest for Freedom (Applewood Books, 1997). Willard’s essay was originally published in 1895 as “How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle.”

22 Frances Willard, A Wheel Within a Wheel: A Woman’s Quest for Freedom (Applewood Books, 1997) p. 73.

Look through the volumes of the Cycle History Proceedings-
http://www.cyclepublishing.com/cyclingbooks/his18.html
There are some good scholarly articles on this topic. I think that is where I ran across a charming diary kept by a bicycling teenage girl in the 1890's. The Wheelmen and the Veteran Cycle Club are also good resources. And for a good chuckle, my period favorite is "The Dangers and Evils of Bicycling"-
http://books.google.com/books?id=9yugAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA641&dq=a#v=onepage&q=a&f=false
Not only are bicycles physically harmful, the lead to a moral collapse!

I LOVE Tillie the Terrible! She's amazing, I look forward to digging more into the archives to learn more about her.

On the subject, What other particularly famous cycling women do we have spanning the next 100 years?

Interesting stuff, keep it coming. " The Dangers and Evils of Bicycling" is a hoot, think the author may have been hitting the medicinal cocaine while writing that piece.

Im a woman lover and im not ashamed to admit they are likely the better of the 2 genders........one of my favorite gals was margaret gast.......she raced merkels too

Annie Londonderry's story is very interesting. She left her three children at home with her husband while she rode around the world in the late 1890's.

http://www.annielondonderry.com/

Manufacturing Ingenuity

Here is an example of the early contributions of women on the development of the bicycle as a machine as well as a social construct.

This might interest you....

http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Women_&_Bicycles

http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Great_Bicycling_Protest_of_1896

http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=CARVILLE:_Suburban_Bohemia_in_Fin_de_Siecle_San_Francisco

http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Great_Bicycle_Parade_of_1896