Writing the Bicycle

Writing the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric, and Technology in Late Nineteenth-Century America Sarah Overbaugh Hallenbeck A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: Jane Danielewicz Jordynn Jack Daniel Anderson Jane Thrailkill Beverly Taylor ABSTRACT Sarah Overbaugh Hallenbeck Writing the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric, and Technology in Late Nineteenth-Century America (Under the direction of Jane Danielewicz and Jordynn Jack) This project examines the intersections among rhetoric, gender, and technology, examining in particular the ways that American women appropriated the new technology of the bicycle at the turn of the twentieth century. It asks: how are technologies shaped by discourse that emanates both from within and beyond professional boundaries? In what ways do technologies, in turn, reshape the social networks in which they emerge—making available new arguments and rendering others less persuasive? And to what extent are these arguments furthered by the changed conditions of embodiment and materiality that new technologies often initiate? Writing the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric and Technology in Late Nineteenth- Century America addresses these questions by considering how women’s interactions with the bicycle allowed them to make new claims about their minds and bodies, and transformed the gender order in the process. The introduction, “Rhetoric, Gender, Technology,” provides an overview of the three broad conversations to which the project primarily contributes: science and technology studies, feminist historiography, and rhetorical theory. In addition, it outlines a “techno-feminist” materialist methodology that emphasizes the material ii and rhetorical agency of users in shaping technologies beyond their initial design and distribution phases. The second chapter, “Technology and the Rhetoric of Bicycle Design,” describes the context in which the bicycle craze emerged and explains how the popular “safety” model responded to users’ concerns about its predecessor, the high wheeled “ordinary” bicycle. The third chapter, “Popular Magazines and the Rise of the Woman Bicyclist,” offers a glimpse at a genre that generated both wider acceptance of the new technology and specific prescriptions as to how it might be useful to women. Finally, the fourth and fifth chapters—titled, respectively, “Bicycling and the Invention of Women’s Athletic Dress” and “The Medical Bicycle”--examine two discourses that shaped the women’s bicycling phenomenon, both rhetorically and materially, and that were in turn transformed by this phenomenon: the heated issues of women’s dress reform and women’s health. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To all those who helped with this dissertation, I offer my sincerest thanks. My two advisors, Jane Danielewicz and Jordynn Jack, assisted me in innumerable ways throughout the past two years. Dr. Danielewicz provided strong moral support and practical advice that prevented me from feeling overwhelmed by the dissertation process. Dr. Jack offered incisive comments and recommended resources without which I could never have completed this project. Also, Beverly Taylor helped me to conceive of the dissertation during its early stages, as I stumbled upon my subject matter in her seminar. And Dan Anderson asked some tough but important questions that were influential during my final stages of writing. Other members of the faculty at UNC—John McGowan, Joe Viscomi, Jeanne Moskal, Jane Thrailkill, and Todd Taylor—pointed me toward important resources along the way. Archivists at the Hagley Library and Museum in Wilmington, DE, the Denver Public Library, and the Sallie Gordon Center for Women’s History and Culture also provided guidance in locating primary sources. I am extremely grateful to my graduate colleagues who have assisted me during this project. The members of my invaluable writing group—Risa Applegarth, Heather Branstetter, Stephanie Morgan, Chelsea Redeker, and Erich Werner—have read and offered feedback on drafts and ideas weekly for almost two years. Emily Brewer and Marc Cohen have provided moral support and provided an occasional outside perspective for which I am thankful. iv Last of all, I would like to thank my family. My parents have been patient and supportive throughout this long and circuitous endeavor I have undertaken. Finally, my husband, Glenn Emery, has never wavered in his faith in my efforts. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. Introduction: Rhetoric, Gender, Technology ………………………………1 Conversation #1: Science and Technology Studies…………………………………4 Moving Toward Rhetorics of Technoscience…………………………………………9 Conversation #2: Feminist Historiography in Rhetorical Studies…………..14 Conversation #3: Rhetoric and Embodied Practices…………………………….18 Situating Techno-Feminist Rhetorical Methodology.................................24 Chapter Outlines………………………………………………………………………………29 II. Technology and the Rhetoric of Bicycle Design…………………… 35 Speed, Stunts, and Headers: The Daring Wheelman on the Ordinary…….41 Expanding Safety and Accessibility…………………………………………………….50 New Questions, New Solutions, New Women and the Safety Bicycle……..61 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………75 III. Popular Magazines and the Woman Bicyclist ……………………………79 The Popular Magazine as the Genre of Consumerism…………………………..83 Intersecting Genres and the Negotiation of Piety…………………………………90 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………122 vi IV. Users Negotiate Bicycle Dress ……………………………………………………126 Tuning and the Technological System………………………………………………130 Bicycle Dress Within a Rhetoric of Choice…………………………………………141 Tuning into Rhetorics of Function and Fashion…………………………………149 Language, Performance, and Women’s Reform………………………………….161 V. The Medical Bicycle …………………………………………………………………….175 The Case Against Bicycling………………………………………………………………179 Changing Perspectives on Women’s Bodies……………………………………….190 The Bicycle and the Mandate for Scientific Medicine………………………….199 Technological Tuning………………………………………………………………………213 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………222 VI. Conclusions …………………………………………………………………………………227 Conclusion #1…………………………………………………………………………………229 Conclusion #2…………………………………………………………………………………231 Conclusion #3………………………………………………………………………………..233 Works Consulted ………………………………………………………………………………………236 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Ladies’ High Wheel Bicycle……………………………………………………………………36 2.2 High Wheel Bicyclists…………………………………………………………………………….42 2.3 Columbia bicycle advertisement with racing records………………………………..45 2.4 Eagle Bicycle Company trade catalogue image ………………………………………..52 2.5 Overman Tricycle advertisement image, 1884………………………………………….54 2.6 Pope Manufacturing Company advertisement, 1884………………………………..57 2.7 Trinity Ladies Regular image, with drop frame and dress guard………………..69 2.8 Pope Manufacturing Company Columbia Tandem Bicycle, 1896……………….71 2.9 Pope Manufacturing Company handlebars, 1896……………………………………..74 3.1 Overman Wheel Company advertisement, 1895……………………………………….87 3.2 Overman Victoria ad, Godey’s Magazine , 1896……………………………………….117 3.3 Overman Wheel Co. advertisement. Ladies’ Home Journal , 1894……………..118 3.4 Ivory Soap advertisement. Ladies Home Journal , May 1894…………………….119 4.1 Woman in bustle dress. State Hist. Society of Wisconsin. 1874………………..130 4.2 Parade Entry, Flower Carnival. Horace Poley. 1897…………………………………133 4.3 Columbia Bicycle Dolls advertisement. Delineator , April 1895………………..134 4.4 Bicycle Waists advertisement. Delineator , May 1895……………………………….137 4.5 “How Women Ride the Bicycle.” Harper’s Bazaar July 14, 1894……………..142 4.6 Group of bicyclists. Munsey’s Magazine April 1896………………………………..143 4.7 Bloomer costume from The Delineator . September 1895………………………..144 viii 5.1. Dr. Mary Gordon’s diagram. British Medical Journal 1904……………………..214 5.2 Sager saddle advertisement. Godey’s Magazine . April 1895…………………….216 5.3. Majestic Bicycle advertisement. Godey’s Magazine . April 1895………………..217 ix Rhetoric, Gender, Technology: Introduction In an 1896 interview with New York World reporter Nellie Bly, Susan B. Anthony noted that “the bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world” (9). Given Anthony’s fame as a promoter of women’s suffrage, her statement seems surprising in retrospect; the bicycle, unlike the vote, has scarcely survived in the public imagination as a primary milestone in women’s push for social and political recognition. And yet, Anthony was not alone in her sanguine estimations of the bicycle’s transformative power in women’s lives; many of her contemporaries expressed similar sentiments. The actress Marguerite Merington, for instance, described bicycling in the April 1895 issue of Scribner’s Magazine as “a new and wholesome recreation . whose pursuit adds joy and vigor to the dowry of the race” (703), while Godey’s Magazine reporter Mary Bisland went so far as to declare the bicycle “the Pegasus on which the [female] sex will one day ride into the fulfillment of all its dreams of universal health and beauty” (388). Such comments reveal the extent to which late nineteenth-century American women positioned the bicycle rhetorically as a new technology that was somehow uniquely suited to meet their needs—one that could deliver them greater mobility and independence, improved health and fertility, and even, as Anthony’s statement suggests, a means of upsetting a gender order

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