Adrienne LaFrance praises the bicycle for its contribution to women’s rights:
The [1890s bicycle] craze was meaningful, especially, for women. Both Susan B. Anthony
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are credited with declaring that “woman is riding to suffrage on the bicycle,” a line that was printed and reprinted in newspapers at the turn of the century. The bicycle took “old-fashioned, slow-going notions of the gentler sex,” as The Courier (Nebraska) reported in 1895, and replaced them with “some new woman, mounted on her steed of steel.” And it gave women a new level of transportation independence that perplexed newspaper columnists across the country. …
“The woman on the wheel is altogether a novelty, and is essentially a product of the last decade of the century,” wrote The Columbian (Pennsylvania) newspaper in 1895, “she is riding to greater freedom, to a nearer equality with man, to the habit of taking care of herself, and to new views on the subject of clothes philosophy.” Yes, bicycle-riding required a shift away from the restrictive, modest fashion of the Victorian age, and ushered in a new era of exposed ankles – or at least visible bloomers – that represented such a departure from the laced up, ruffled down fashion that preceded it that bicycling women became a fascination to the (mostly male) newspaper reporters of the time.
The bicycle still serves as an inspiring symbol for female liberation; see our coverage of the 2013 Saudi film Wadjda.
(Cartoon from the June 23, 1895 issue of The [L.A.] Herald, via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers)
The Dish 