A wheel within a wheel : How I learned to ride the bicycle, with some…
At sixty years old, Frances Willard set out to learn something that terrified her: the bicycle. What began as a physical challenge became a meditation on freedom itself. Written in 1895, this charming memoir captures the moment when a simple machine promised women an entirely new relationship with their own bodies and their place in the world. Willard, the legendary president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and titan of the suffrage movement, writes with disarming honesty about fear, failure, and the revolutionary joy of mastering something new. The bicycle, she understood, was never just about transportation. It was about moving through the world on one's own terms, about the terrifying and exhilarating business of claiming independence. A window into a pivotal moment in women's history, when a new technology offered a generation of women their first taste of unbound movement.
Editions
X-Ray
“If women patronize the wheel the number of buyers will be twice as large. If women ride they must, when riding, dress more rationally than they have been wont to do. If they do this many prejudices as to what they may be allowed to wear will melt away. Reason will gain upon precedent and ere long the comfortable, sensible, and artistic wardrobe of the rider will make the conventional style of woman's dress absurd to the eye and unenduring to the understanding. A reform often advances most rapidly by indirection. An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory; and the graceful and becoming costume of woman on the bicycle will convince the world that has brushed aside the theories, no matter how well constructed, and the arguments, no matter how logical, of dress-reformers.””
— Frances E. Willard
“In 1895, Ann Strong declared in the Minneapolis Tribune that bicycles were "just as good company as most husbands" and that when a bicycle gets shabby or old a woman could "dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community.””
— Frances E. Willard
“Another writer argued in an 1895 issue of the Cosmopolitan that by riding a bicycle, a woman would "become mistress of herself," transformed into a "rational, useful being restored to health and sanity.””
— Frances E. Willard
“The opacity of the mind, its inability to project itself into the realm of another's personality, goes a long way to explain the friction of life. If we would set down other people's errors to this rather than to malice prepense we should not only get more good out of life and feel more kindly toward our fellows, but doubtless the rectitude of our intellects would increase, and the justice of our judgments...we are so shut away from one another that none tells those about him what he considers ideal treatment on their part toward him...nothing will probe to the core of this greatest disadvantage under which we labor--that is, mutual noncomprehension--except a basis of society and government which would make it easy for each to put himself in another's place because his place is so much like another's...we [would] need less imagination in order to do that which is just and kind to every one about us.””
— Frances E. Willard
“As an exercise bicycling is superior to most, if not all, others at our command. It takes one into the outdoor air; it is entirely under control; can be made gentle or vigorous as one desires; is active and not passive; takes the rider outside of himself and the thoughts and cares of his daily work; develops his will, his attention, his courage and independence; and makes pleasant what is otherwise irksome.””
— Frances E. Willard
“We contended that whatever diminishes the sense of superiority in men makes them more manly, brotherly, and pleasant to have about; we felt sure that the bluff, the swagger, the bravado of young men would not outlive the mastery of the outdoor arts in which his sister is now successfully engaged...indeed, we felt that if she continued to improve after the fashion of the last decade her physical achievements will be such that it will become the pride of many a ruddy youth to be known as "that girl's brother.””
— Frances E. Willard
“To my mind the infelicities of which we see so much in life grow out of lack of time and patience to study and adjust our natures to those of others, though we have agreed in the sight of God and man to stand up for one another to the last. Many will not take the pains, they have not enough specific gravity, to balance themselves in their new environment. Indeed, I found a whole philosophy of life in the wooing and the winning of my bicycle.””
— Frances E. Willard
“That which caused the many failures I had in learning the bicycle had caused me failures in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for of judgment; a too vivid realization of the uncertainty of everything about me; an underlying doubt--at once, however (and this is all that saved me), matched and overcome by the determination not to give in to it.””
— Frances E. Willard
