She Can Go Where She Will : Representations of Female Bicyclists in Late 19th-Century and Early 20th-Century Literature by H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Richardson, Grant Allen, George F. Hall, and Alice Meynell

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to investigate how representations of bicycling women in literary works by H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Richardson, Grant Allen, George F. Hall, and Alice Meynell express mental and physical freedoms that had previously been denied women due to archaic societal norms. The selected pieces of literature are from the late 19th century and early 20th century, a period during which both the bicycle boom and female emancipation contributed in significant ways to societal change. Through close readings, examples are given of how the New Woman character used the bicycle as a catalyst in the struggle for emancipation and a feminist approach is applied to explore how literary bicycling women characters oppose the stipulated gender norms, challenge the prevailing gender dichotomy and hierarchy, and attain new aspects of freedom. This essay shows that the bicycle grants women characters in the selected texts not only physical aspects of freedom but psychological ones as well.