A Victorian postcard from Germany. Modern Records Centre/University of Warwick
Cycling, in its most familiar form, dates back to at least the 19th century. One example of an early bicycle was known as the “hobby horse”, and it later became the “Dandy horse” and then the “accelerator”. Early cycling was reserved for the upper-classes and was seen as highly fashionable and decorous – particularly for men.
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Women’s cycling, on the other hand, was viewed as trivial and unbecoming. When women were portrayed cycling, they were often eroticised and undressed.
The early development of women’s bicycles and cycle-wear was impeded by debates on women’s morality and sexual innocence. The bicycle was said to cause “bicycle face” (a face of muscular tension), harm reproductive organs and diminish what supposedly little energy women had.
Cycling women were viewed as sexually promiscuous both for the “unnatural” straddling of the bicycle and for the freedom cycling offered them. Where were they all cycling to, men wondered.
University of Warwick Archive Postcard showing dog ripping cyclists skirt no date.
New women
The development in 1885 of the Rover “safety bicycle” revolutionised women’s cycling. It featured a lower mounting position and inspired somewhat of a cycling craze. By the 1890s, several million women around the world were cycling.
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The influx of female cyclists on the streets created a moral panic for the Victorians. The image of the cycling woman came to represent a new type of woman with feminist ambition. This led to a discourse known simply as the “woman question”.
The ‘new woman’ as depicted in an illustration from 1908. Author provided
The fear caused by this cycling “new woman” is made clear in postcards from the time. The new woman in the example above is abandoning her husband and children for a day out and charging her husband with domestic tasks – a highly provocative notion to a Victorian audience. God forbid, perhaps she is also on her way to a suffragist rally. Cycling women were seen as radicals who threatened the “natural order of things”.
Such was the symbiotic relationship between feminism and women’s cycling, that the bicycle became emblematic of the suffrage movement. This photograph, taken in 1897, was taken at the height of the “woman problem” debate.
An effigy of a cycling woman hangs above a crowd at Cambridge University, as they await the result of a vote on whether female students ought to receive a degree upon completion of study. The vote was defeated and the effigy triumphantly torn down. Women could not receive a degree from Cambridge University until 1948.
The crowd await the result of the Cambridge vote. University of Cambridge
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This photograph captures the cultural rejection of cycling, educated women.
The effigy, dressed in collegiate striped stockings, cap and rational dress is a stereotypical new woman. Akin to a Guy Fawkes dummy in November, during this time the cycling woman momentarily joined Britain’s long history of reviled figures of rebellion.
This article by Tamsin Johnson, PhD candidate in visual cultures, Nottingham Trent University, was first published in The Conversation.