Acceptable Sports for Females #4: Ice Skating

The Winter Olympics always had my family glued to the TV set when I was growing up. Skiing was the backbone of our local economy, Dad worked at a ski area, and ski lessons were part of our school program. The Olympic sport I loved watching the most was figure skating -- the strong and graceful athletes who seemed to defy the force of gravity, with the little remnants of their costumes fluttering as they flew. I never skated as a child, because in our region, any open water was in the form of twisting brooks that flowed downhill over glacial boulders and fallen trees. It would freeze up in great jagged lumps and piles of thick floes. No one seemed to care enough to keep snow cleared off the wider river down in the village.

Ice skating has been a popular pastime and method of transportation for thousands of years, it seems. Holland, with abundant flat stretches of flooded land, was famous for ice skating. By the 19th century, skating was an accepted activity for women, although most pictures depict men skating and women watching them make fools out of themselves. Currier and Ives made a number of popular skating prints, ranging from fun on the farm to vast throngs of jolly urbanites crowding the ice at New York's Central Park.

Most of the fancy footwork and amazing leaps of today's figure skating was developed by competitive and exhibition skaters much later in the 19th century. Some of these skaters were Axel Paulson, Alois Lutz, and Urich Salchow. Names sound familiar?

Sources: Skating scene, Timid Dolly, Rev. Walker, Minerva, falling guys (?).

Acceptable Sports for Females #3: The Graces

You know these ladies, The Three Graces. No doubt our sport of the day was named with them in mind: a trio of elegantly nimble young women floating about, not "sporting" about. In The Girl's Own Book, Mrs. Lydia Child recommends The Graces as an excellent activity. It played with a light wooden hoop and sticks held by the players. Mrs. Child instructs each player to hold two sticks, while contemporary prints of adults playing show them using one stick each. The hoop, which is wrapped in strips of cloth or ribbon to pad it, is thrown up in the air from a stick and caught by another player on their stick or pair of sticks. That player, in turn, keeps the game going by flinging the hoop off the stick. Besides being a fine general physical activity, it promotes good hand-eye coordination. I would think that the two-stick version would be the better of the two in that regard. The hoop must be caught on both sticks held a few inches apart, and flung by crossing the sticks and pulling them apart. I would have been the despair of Mrs. Child, as my complete lack of hand-eye coordination is legendary and the stuff of long-standing oral tradition around the evening campfire. If it involves a moving object and a planned connection between me and it, I'm not your girl.

An interesting, though probably unwritten, rule of the Graces is that a man or boy may play against one or more females, but two males never play against each other. The bottom line is most likely that this is a girl's game, and while it is a friendly gesture on the part of a man to play against women, two guys just  don't fling the hoop around. It's a good way to meet bouncing girls though. That being said, there are later pictures of boys playing against each other. These lads may not have heard of this injunction, or simply dismissed it, claiming they were playing a new game called "Rings of Death", played without the ribbons. Note that these boys use two rings at once. Other early pictures show two rings in use, and the companies which sell the game today usually include two rings. Go, Rings of Death Lads, go!

Acceptable Sports for Females #2: Shuttlecocks & Battledores

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child (1805-1800) was a remarkable woman. A prolific writer, she used her talents to share her convictions; among them, the abolition of slavery in the United States, Native American rights, women's rights, and the education and health of children. She also wrote the classic American poem,  "A Boy's Thanksgiving Day", better known as "Over The River And Through The Woods". Among her books concerning mothers and children are The Mother's Book (1831), and The Girl's Own Book (1833). In both books, she promotes vigorous exercise for both boys and girls, and daily outdoor activity. The Girl's Own Book has descriptions of many suitable activities to promote the health and good physical development of girls. They may seem somewhat limited to today's reader, who is used to girls (and women) playing strenuous team sports and competing in national and international games, but Mrs. Child was a controversial voice for her day. The societal view of women was more and more restrictive as the 19th century wore on, which was most evident in the styles of clothing women were forced to wear by the dictates of fashion. 

One active game Mrs. Child recommends is Shuttlecocks and Battledores, an early version of badminton. The shuttlecock (or birdie, as we call it) was batted back and forth between players until a player missed and let the shuttlecock fall. A net was not used until the rise of "badminton battledore", a game popular in British India and transported back to Britain by retired army officers.  Shuttlecocks and Battledores was a popular game in France in the late 1700s, and like most other French things (except for guillotining large numbers of the population), it was taken up by the British upper classes with great enthusiasm. 

Dolly and Minerva are visiting their friends, the Sperlings, of whom I will write at length at a later date. The Sperling girls are playing with their brother Henry, while a French couple play in the background. 

Sources: Caricatures Parisiennes, watercolors of Diana Sperling, Ackermann's Repository, frame

Acceptable Feminine Sports in Georgian England: #1. Archery

I am not much of a sports person. Alright, I'm hopeless at sports and I don't much care, so the limitations on physical activity for women in Georgian high society would not have bothered me much.  I would have been content to sit, shaded by my parasol, watching the young men prance about, displaying their feats of strength and sweating. Sports for women, such as they were, were established by necessity, such as being able to ride a horse well and gracefully, or sports in which women appeared elegant and poised. The loose, lighter clothing styles during this era enabled women to be much more active, and many of them must have longed to indulge in some seriously energetic physical activity. Many of Ackermann's fashion plates show women in "walking dress", or garments suitable for seaside strolls. Seawater baths were becoming popular, and many women, including Jane Austen, were fond of a brisk swim in the waves.


One particularly popular feminine sport was archery. Archery built up strength and promoted good posture. Moreover, women looked lovely while they pulled the bowstring back. In their long, white gowns, they conjured up the perfect classical image of Diana the Huntress. Many archery clubs sprang up during 1780s, and soon after, some began accepting women as members. One in particular, the Royal British Bowmen, was the first in that regard. A serious competitive group, the RBB viewed the presence of women as a deterrent to male members who were less devoted to improving skills and more inclined to drink and carouse. Archery societies such as these were excellent venues for upper-crust young men and women to meet and socialize. The Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma shows an archery scene, although Austen's book does not include it. It is a common activity, however, and in a movie, provides a much more interesting setting to this contentious dialogue than two talking heads on a park bench. Poor Emma is not hitting the mark on any level.

Sources: Adam Buck print, The Archers; Ackermann's Repository; Royal British Bowmen (link above); Currier & Ives lithograph, Indian Hunter; photos of wicker furniture.