Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (with a Few Flat Tires Along the Way)

by Sue Macy Narrated by Meredith Orlow

Overview

A finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award, Sue Macy's Wheels of Change offers young listeners an eye-opening account of how, beginning in the late 19th century, the bicycle helped change the course of women's history. Macy meticulously documents how women used the freedom of their newfound mobility to effect social change even in the face of constant challenges. ''A strong, high-interest choice for both classroom and personal reading- for adults, too.''- Booklist

Editorial Reviews

School Library Journal

Gr 5–8—The heyday of the bicycle in the late 1800s seems to go hand-in-hand with the early struggle for more freedoms and rights for women. With this simple mode of transportation, new worlds were suddenly open to women who had been living under fairly strict social customs; it gave them the confidence to explore new opportunities, exercise, and even transform their clothing from the restrictive corsets and petticoats to ones that were more comfortable, and considerably more daring. The use of primary sources such as advertisements, excerpts from journals, photographs, and artwork all add invaluably to the informative and accessible writing. Sidebars and spotlights on individual women important to both the sport of cycling as well as the fight for more freedoms are of particular interest and create an eye-catching and inviting format. A time line contrasting the history of the women's movement with the bicycle's history is especially interesting. Booktalk this title with Jane Kurtz's Bicycle Madness (Holt, 2003) for a great fiction/nonfiction pairing, or share it with Julie Cummins's Women Daredevils (Dutton, 2008) for an intriguing look at women's history.—Jody Kopple, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171111076
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	06/15/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

“Many a girl has come to her ruin through a spin on a country road.” – Charlotte Smith, Brooklyn Eagle, August 20, 1896
 
It was June 29, 1896, and Charlotte Smith was beside herself with concern for the young women of the United States. Smith, the 55-year-old daughter of Irish immigrants, had spent the last decade and a half fighting for the rights of female workers. But now all of her worries about their health and well-being were focused on one wildly popular mechanical object: the bicycle.
 
“Bicycling by young women has helped to swell the ranks of reckless girls who finally drift into the standing army of outcast women of the United States,” wrote Smith in a resolution issued by her group, the Women’s Rescue League. “The bicycle is the devil’s advance agent morally and physically in thousands of instances.” Smith’s resolution called for “all true women and clergymen” to join with her in denouncing the bicycle craze among women as “indecent and vulgar.” She set her sights on New York City as the laboratory for her reform efforts, opening a branch of her Washington-based organization there with the goal of ultimately limiting the use of the bicycle by women.
 
Smith blamed the bicycle for the downfall of women’s health, morals, and religious devotion. Her accusations brought a swift and impassioned response. The Reverend Dr. A. Stewart Walsh, a respected clergyman in New York City and a cyclist himself, wrote a letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle declaring. “I have associated with thousands of riders...and I have not seen among them . . . anything that could begin to approach the outrageous and scandalous indecency of the resolutions of the alleged rescue league.” 
 
Ellen B. Parkhurst, wife of another New York minister, celebrated the advantages of bicycle riding in Washington’s Evening Times. “Of course I do not believe that bicycling is immoral,” she said. “A girl who rides a wheel is lifted out of herself and her surroundings. She is made to breathe purer air, see fresher and more beautiful scenes, and get an amount of exercise she would not otherwise get. All this is highly beneficial.”
 
In fact, the impact of the bicycle on the health and welfare of its riders was the subject of a great deal of discussion in the 1890s. At first, the popularity of the safety drew mostly praise as its use seemed to usher in a new era of robust living. Medical literature linked cycling to cures for everything from asthma and diabetes to heart disease and varicose veins, while one study credited the decreasing death rate from consumption (tuberculosis) among women in Massachusetts to their increasing use of the bicycle. Cigar sales took a hit — one industry estimate suggested people were buying as many as one million fewer cigars per day — because cyclists were too busy exercising to indulge in the smoking habit. And in Chicago, bicycling evidently caused a drop in the use of the painkiller morphine. “The morphine takers have discovered that a long spin in the fresh air on a cycle induces sweet sleep better than their favorite drug,” reported the British Medical Journal in November 1895.

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