Organized sport and the middle‐class woman in nineteenth‐century Scotland

Tranter, N. L.

doi:10.1080/09523368908713676

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…largely ignorant of the affairs of the public sphere'. 7 The appropriate social space for especially bourgeois women was not on the sports field but in the family home, living a life of 'pampered and sickly idleness with no more purpose than to spread an aura of goodness and gentleness'. 8 In sport, this ideal was reinforced through the prevailing amateur ethos, which placed considerable emphasis on the physical characteristics of manliness.…”

Section: Women's Lawn Tennis In a Wider Social Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and Etiquette in British Lawn Tennis 1870–1939: A Case Study of ‘Mixed Doubles’

Lake

2012

The International Journal of the History of Sport

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mixed doubles' was regarded as the most popular type of lawn tennis game for those preferring the 'social' aspects to competition. An analysis of behavioural etiquette in mixed doubles from 1870 to 1939 reveals a considerable amount about shifting gender relations in wider British society. Findings are presented from over 50 textbooks and instructional guides on mixed doubles play published throughout this period in order to answer the following questions: What differences are evident in the ways that men and women were instructed to play mixed doubles? How was the often uneasy balance between male competitiveness and chivalry dealt with in the context of play? What can an analysis of changing fashions of female tennis players and associated behavioural etiquette in mixed doubles tell us about shifting gender relations in wider British society, and what role did these developments play within broader feminist movements? IntroductionThere has been a good deal written about women in sport in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and lawn tennis has enjoyed considerable attention, most probably because of its comparative openness to female participation throughout its history. 1 It was one of the first sports in which men and women not only participated in near equal numbers but also actually played together. Thus, the sport served an emancipatory function for women, 2 and lawn tennis can be considered 'contested terrain' where notions of 'female appropriate' physical activities were both challenged and reinforced through demonstration, dialogue and debate. From the 1870s, when lawn tennis first emerged in Britain, until the onset of the Second World War, the social status, behavioural conventions, associated fashions and playing styles of women in lawn tennis changed dramatically, and, in part, reflected changing British attitudes towards gender relations and sporting etiquette. At times, women pushed the boundaries of suitability and, in so doing, challenged traditional boundaries of male hegemony, but at other times reinforced dominant ideologies related to their supposed physical, emotional and intellectual weaknesses. The story of women in lawn tennis, thus, is one of progress and liberation, but also of more or

show abstract

Section: Women's Lawn Tennis In a Wider Social Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and Etiquette in British Lawn Tennis 1870–1939: A Case Study of ‘Mixed Doubles’

Lake

2012

The International Journal of the History of Sport

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Yet, as Tranter has noted, in the late nineteenth century some Scottish women were participating in physical activity, but these women were clearly trying to negotiate their activity within contemporary medical and social discourses. 27 Towards the end of the nineteenth century cricket, hockey, lacrosse and netball were established as reasonably suitable games for Scottish schoolgirls. 28 It was generally understood that when girls became young women they would leave these games behind in the pursuit of more ladylike activities, and Tranter suggests that most Scottish women did just that.…”

Section: Medical Men and The Lady Cyclistmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Scottish Cyclist and the New Woman: Representations of Female Cyclists in Scotland, 1890–1914

Macrae¹

2015

J Scottish Historical Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the 1890s British women witnessed a ‘cycling craze’ that had the potential to enhance the health and physical freedom of many women. This article examines the cycling craze from a Scottish perspective by investigating representations of Scottish female cyclists in a weekly magazine first printed in Glasgow in 1888 entitled The Scottish Cyclist. Despite suggestions that the popularity of cycling faltered after the initial ‘cycling-craze’ of the mid-1890s, perusal of The Scottish Cyclist suggests that a number of Scottish women continued to cycle beyond the years of this initial craze, thus eventually helping to make the cycling woman a familiar sight in Scottish society. This article argues that whilst by 1914 the cycling woman clad in ‘rational dress’ was no longer a key symbol of emancipation, still the determination of female cyclists in Scotland had contributed to the physical emancipation of women, giving them access to greater independence, mobility, and physical freedom.

show abstract

The threat of robust mothers

2007

The International Journal of the History of Sport

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Organized sport and the middle‐class woman in nineteenth‐century Scotland

Cited by 7 publications

References 5 publications

Gender and Etiquette in British Lawn Tennis 1870–1939: A Case Study of ‘Mixed Doubles’

Gender and Etiquette in British Lawn Tennis 1870–1939: A Case Study of ‘Mixed Doubles’

The Scottish Cyclist and the New Woman: Representations of Female Cyclists in Scotland, 1890–1914

The threat of robust mothers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About