View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Online Kunapipi Volume 23 Issue 1 Article 21 2001 The Body of the Imperial Mother: Women, Exercise and the Future of ‘the Race’ in Britain, 1870-1914 Mandy Treagus Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Treagus, Mandy, The Body of the Imperial Mother: Women, Exercise and the Future of ‘the Race’ in Britain, 1870-1914, Kunapipi, 23(1), 2001. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol23/iss1/21 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library:
[email protected] The Body of the Imperial Mother: Women, Exercise and the Future of ‘the Race’ in Britain, 1870-1914 Abstract The rise of sport in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain occurred at a time when the British Empire was at its height. According to J.A. Mangan, ‘A potent education ideology known as athleticism evolved in response to a late Victorian obsession with character and imperialism’ (1992, 3). It was a time when the idea of Empire, and with it an understanding of the supremacy of the English race, had a great grip upon the public imagination, especially that of the middle classes. Connections between male sport and the spread and maintenance of the Empire were often made and widely believed: ‘For many Victorians and Edwardians there was an obvious link between the development of endurance, toughness and courage on English playing fields and pioneering in ustrA alia, preaching in Africa and soldiering in Burma’ (Mangan 1981, 138).