This summer, Franklin & Marshall intern Lydia Shaw has been working on women’s history projects at the Library Company. In preparation for Women’s Equality Day (today!), Lydia read Frances Willard’s 1895 book on her personal experience learning to ride the bicycle. Willard became enthralled with bicycling at a time when bicycling was a new pastime, and one associated with male athleticism. Lydia writes:
"In the second half of the 19th century, a new, healthy, and excitingly challenging means of transportation appeared in American popular culture: the bicycle. The first bicycle (known as the “Ordinary”), the amusing-looking 19th-century bicycle of collective popular memory, had a giant front wheel and a small back wheel and was exclusive to young men who possessed the funds to purchase it. These same young men made yet more exclusive biking clubs, to which they could bring their female romantic partners as guests... Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, women were discouraged from riding a bicycle whatsoever."
To read Lydia's full post, click here.
Frances Willard, the author of Wheel within a Wheel, will be featured in the exhibition Women Get Things Done, opening soon at the Library Company of Philadelphia!
Frances Willard. Wheel within a Wheel (1895).