By Grace Kostrzebski
March 13, 2025
Bicycles offered a route to freedom – in more ways than one, especially for women. In the nineteenth century, American upper and middle class women were expected to stay at home, raise children, and keep house. The transportation available to women at the time discouraged their travel. While trains, cars, and streetcars were becoming more common in cities, rural areas still largely depended on horses – especially carriages. Women needed men to care for horses and hook them to carriages as doing so without a man’s help was seen as unfeminine. Travelling almost anywhere for women was dependent on a man. Yet, bicycles soon revolutionized women’s ability to travel.
Bicycles were affordable and practical: they were widely available, easy to learn how to use and maintain, and were light and small to store. Men and women suddenly could afford a convenient way to travel – and the popularity of the bicycle exploded.
A cartoon published in the humor magazine Puck in 1897 illustrates this transformation in roles. The title, “Her Choice,” the dialogue, ““I’m going to take a spin on my wheel, and will be back in two or three hours,” and the clothing worn by the woman all emphasize the liberating potential of cycling. The tire of a bicycle is just visible behind the chair. The three children, the distraught husband, and the man’s memories of courtship provide further illustrations of how the bicycle could emancipate women from these traditional duties.
The opportunities for emancipation coincided with the movement for women’s liberation – particularly the campaign for the right to vote. Existing suffragists could get to and from meetings quickly, and women of lower socioeconomic status could finally afford to travel to attend meetings with the bicycle. The bicycle soon came to be adopted by the women’s suffrage movement as a symbol of women’s liberation. Susan B. Anthony, a leading suffrage activist, said bicycles have “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a close contemporary to Anthony, said of bicycles that they “will inspire women with more courage, self-respect, [and] self-reliance.” Fighting for the right to vote for white women, both activists agreed that bicycles were an important step towards women’s liberation and eventually a woman’s right to vote.
The legacies of women’s suffrage movements in the late nineteenth century are complicated, as leaders did not extend the same commitment to emancipation to African Americans in the South or to marginalized and vulnerable populations. Suffragist Mary Johnston, whose life is the focus of the Episode 18: Buchanan of the Bike 76 VA podcast, was unusual in arguing that the right to vote should be extended to all women regardless of race.
The aspiration to achieving freedom by cycling remains a powerful legacy of nineteenth century emancipation movements such as the suffrage campaign. Cycling advocacy groups have recently introduced the slogan, “Bicycling delivers the freedom that auto ads promise,” thus returning to a theme present in American culture more than a century ago. Bicycles were, and still are, powerful tools and symbols of liberation. Freedom is owning and riding a bicycle.
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