The 1897 protests, 2: the woman cyclist
Fears of the 'New Woman' at Cambridge
This is Part Two of ‘No Women at Cambridge!’ The 1897 protests. In this final part I look in detail at close-up images of the women present in the photograph above, and investigate their connection to the women's colleges and their campaign for women students to have the right to a Cambridge B.A.
The female cyclist
An effigy of a young woman on a bicycle has been suspended above the entrance to the university bookshop. Wearing a pink bodice, blue bloomers and striped stockings, she is a misogynistic caricature of a ‘Girton girl’, a student at Girton College, Cambridge. It seems likely that she has red hair, familiar shorthand at the time for a ‘dangerous woman’, and her depiction as a cyclist connects her to the independent-minded New Woman of the 1890s (see ‘Ladies who cy…
