“If there’s any symbol for the transformation that had occurred in the lives of American women as they approached the twentieth century, it ought to be the bicycle. The pictures of Willard tooling around in her long black skirt and high-necked blouse might remind modern readers of the villainous Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz, pedaling off with Toto in her basket. But women who had spent their lives wrapped in corsets and weighed down by heavy skirts must have been thrilled to be able to go flying down the street on two wheels. “Wheeling” offered independence as well as speed, and it was not only respectable; it was fashionable””
America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines
