*Shortlisted for the 2022 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize* This book is the first, full-length scholarly examination of British women’s involvement in equestrianism from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, as well as the corresponding transformations of gender, class, sport, and national identity in Britain and its Empire. It argues that women’s participation in horse sports transcended limitations of class and gender in Britain and highlights the democratic ethos that allowed anyone skilled enough to ride and hunt – from chimney-sweep to courtesan. Furthermore, women’s involvement in equestrianism reshaped ideals of race and reinforced imperial ideology at the zenith of the British Empire. Here, British women abandoned the sidesaddle – which they had been riding in for almost half a millennium – to ride astride like men, thus gaining complete equality on horseback. Yet female equestrians did not seek further emancipation in the form of political rights. This paradox – of achieving equality through sport but not through politics – shows how liberating sport was for women into the twentieth century. It brings into question what “emancipation” meant in practice to women in Britain from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. This is fascinating reading for scholars of sports history, women's history, British history, and imperial history, as well as those interested in the broader social, gendered, and political histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and for all equestrian enthusiasts.
My dissertation explores the impact of women's participation in horse sports on gender norms, imperial ideology, and national identity in Britain over the long nineteenth century. Using rarely utilized sources such as riding manuals, sporting periodicals, and memoirs of Empire, I trace equestrian activities from fox-hunting to show-jumping, polo to pig-sticking. Though by riding sidesaddle women were made distinct and separate from male riders, the style actually facilitated their entry into the public sphere via sport. In full glare of the public gaze, women riders became either admired or admonished, respectable or risible, based on their own skills and power. At a time when the ideal Victorian woman was exhorted to exude domestic bliss within the home, female equestrians appeared to be the very opposite of what prescriptive literature demanded. Yet they transformed public opinion by making the masculine qualities fostered by riding---independence, self-possession, and capability---into positive feminine attributes. Female riders in Britain had created a "new woman" before there was the "new woman." Such confidence and flexibility also served them well around the British Empire. Here women revised not only social and cultural norms about domesticity and femininity, but they also transformed sport by abandoning the traditional sidesaddle for the man's cross-saddle in order to better pursue imperial activities such as polo and pig-sticking. In riding this way and adopting masculine sporting attire (literally wearing the breeches), women revolutionized gender construction, promoting a femininity not based on outward appearance but inward qualities. This imperial femininity significantly affected gender ideals within Britain, and well before the First World War or the achievement of the vote, female equestrians had achieved an important nonpolitical equality that resulted in the transformation of conventional social and cultural values.
*Shortlisted for the 2022 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize* This book is the first, full-length scholarly examination of British women’s involvement in equestrianism from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, as well as the corresponding transformations of gender, class, sport, and national identity in Britain and its Empire. It argues that women’s participation in horse sports transcended limitations of class and gender in Britain and highlights the democratic ethos that allowed anyone skilled enough to ride and hunt – from chimney-sweep to courtesan. Furthermore, women’s involvement in equestrianism reshaped ideals of race and reinforced imperial ideology at the zenith of the British Empire. Here, British women abandoned the sidesaddle – which they had been riding in for almost half a millennium – to ride astride like men, thus gaining complete equality on horseback. Yet female equestrians did not seek further emancipation in the form of political rights. This paradox – of achieving equality through sport but not through politics – shows how liberating sport was for women into the twentieth century. It brings into question what “emancipation” meant in practice to women in Britain from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. This is fascinating reading for scholars of sports history, women's history, British history, and imperial history, as well as those interested in the broader social, gendered, and political histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and for all equestrian enthusiasts.
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