“One needs to be very brave to stand all that”: Cycling, rational dress and the struggle for citizenship in late nineteenth century Britain

Katrina Jungnickel

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.04.008

Abstract

The article discusses changing ideas around citizenship through an analysis of first person accounts of women cyclists in Rational Dress in late nineteenth century Britain. A close reading of personal correspondence provides a sense of how it felt to cycle while dressed in new mobility costumes, such as bloomers, in urban and suburban English landscapes. Such attired and independently mobile women affirmed or unsettled onlooker’s understandings of how middle and upper class women should look and act in public. Some viewers subjected them to verbal and often physical assault. Others, in awe of their socio-technical sophistication were more supportive. Taking a ’bloomer point of view’ provides a unique socio-material way of gaining a deeper understanding of what enabled and also inhibited women’s claims to citizenship and freedom of movement, especially at a time when women were not citizens in a legal sense. I argue that through these richly described accounts we gain insightful glimpses into how individual sensory, embodied and political experiences collectively illuminate the becoming of ’citizen’ as it relates to mobility, gender and landscape.

Highlights

The article discusses changing ideas around citizenship through an analysis of first person accounts of women cyclists in Rational Dress in late nineteenth century Britain
A close reading of personal correspondence provides a sense of how it felt to cycle while dressed in new mobility costumes, such as bloomers, in urban and suburban English landscapes
I argue that through these richly described accounts we gain insightful glimpses into how individual sensory, embodied and political experiences collectively illuminate the becoming of ’citizen’ as it relates to mobility, gender and landscape

Summary

Freedom of movement

Minnie says ‘‘Oxford is the most begotted place in the world kingdom and the meeting is likely to raise a great protest in the papers which will deter followers’’. Members advocated fewer layers and lighter fabric to enable people, and especially women, to embrace a more active lifestyle, including cycling In these letters we learn that Kitty and her companions cycled around English cities, rural areas and the suburban sprawl in-between in rational dress. I argue that bloomers (and larger attending ideologies of rational dress) helped women carve out and legitimise a mobile presence in outdoor space and in doing so negotiate citizenship in different ways, place and times. While Harberton’s and Buckman’s correspondence provides a tantalizing glimpse into the strategy and politics of the movement interwoven with personal triumphs and despair, with Kitty et al.’s writings we gain insight into the individual experiences of everyday cycling in rational dress, bringing to light how embodied and sensory practices, situated. I argue that through these richly described accounts we gain insightful glimpses into how individual sensory, embodied and political experiences collectively illuminate the becoming of ‘citizen’ as it relates to mobility, gender and landscape

Dress reform and gendered mobile bodies

First person accounts

See Supplement to the Rational Dress Gazette

View from the bloomers

Making sense of the female cycling citizen