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Play Up! Play Up! And Play the Game! Sport at the Late Victorian Girls' Public School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Kathleen E. McCrone
Kathleen E. McCrone*
Affiliation:
University of Windsor
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Extract

Although in recent years Victorianists have eagerly cultivated the fields of sport and women's history, they have produced surprisingly little relating the two areas. Historians of women have virtually ignored the physical dimension of the struggle for female emancipation, while historians of sport have reflected sport's traditional male orientation by neglecting the distaff side. As W. J. Baker noted recently in the Journal of Sport History, “the history of British women in sports … stands high on the agenda of work to be done.”

What limited material there is on women's sport history as such has tended to be produced by physical educators or amateurs like former players and journalists whose methodology can only be described as narrative-descriptive. A broad historical perspective permitting an exploration of the relationship between women's sport and social change is noticeable by its absence. Interpretation and analysis if they exist at all are usually limited to commonplace and uncritical observations about sport mirroring social attitudes to women and providing them with new opportunities for recreation and physical exercise. Such studies should not be denigrated, for when precious little has been known even of the facts of women's involvement in sport their revelation is certainly an important stage in the journey of discovery. However, if a truly meaningful and comprehensive picture is to be developed interpretative accounts are needed, which deal with such topics as power and control, motivation, the nature of participation, female sport's ambiguities and socially disruptive potential, its emancipating and restricting characteristics, and the interaction between feminism and female athleticism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Spring 1984 , pp. 106 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1984

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References

The author is pleased to acknowledge a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which greatly facilitated work on this project.

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39 Atkinson, , “Fitness,” p. 92Google Scholar. Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, just prior to her assumption of the Newnham College principalship, was responsible for a particularly interesting effort by college educators to demonstrate that higher education had no discernible physical disadvantages. In 1890, incensed by an article in the Pall Mall Gazette which repeated the familiar argument that women were being educated at the expense of the reserve strength needed for motherhood, she assembled a committee, representing Girton, Newnham, Lady Margaret Hall, and Somerville Colleges, to collect health statistics on women students. A survey was conducted, and in the resulting publication the health of students was compared with that of relatives of similar age who had not been to college. Taken into consideration were hours of sleep, work, and exercise, and the health of parents and children. The conclusion reached was that, although there was some evidence students enjoyed a higher standard of health throughout their lives and that they produced healthier children, on the whole college education did not significantly affect health one way or the other. Mrs. Sidgwick personally took the survey a step further by photo-graphing former students' babies to prove higher education was not damaging to the future of the race. See Baldwin, Catherine, “Note on the Health of Women Student,” Century Magazine 42 (1890), 294–95Google Scholar; Sidgwick, Eleanor M., Health Statistics of Women Students of Cambridge and Oxford and of their Sisters(Cambridge, 1890)Google Scholar; Sidgwick, Ethel, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick (London, 1938), p. 144Google Scholar.

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43 The main ones among them were the North London Collegiate School for Ladies (1850), the Cheltenham Ladies College (1853), the schools of the Girls' Public Day School Company (1872), St. Leonards School (1877), Roedean School (1885), and Wycombe Abbey School (1896). All of these will be examined in detail in a longer study, while in this paper Cheltenham, St. Leonards, and Roedean will be used as case studies.

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95 Hendry, A.E., “Social influences upon the Early Development of Physical Education in England,” Journal of Physical Education 61 (March 1969), 19Google Scholar. See also Guttmann, Allen, From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports (New York, 1978), p. 34Google Scholar; Hargreaves, , “Playing Like Gentlemen,” p. 95Google Scholar; Kennard, , “Women, Sport and Society,” p. 168Google Scholar; Turner, , Equality, p. 145Google Scholar.

96 Atkinson, , “Fitness,” p. 128Google Scholar; Hughes, , “Socialization of the body,” pp. 120–22Google Scholar; Smith-Rosenberg, and Rosenberg, , “Female Animal,” pp. 355–56Google Scholar. It goes almost without saying that the movements for dress reform and birth control were part of the same fight for body control.

97 Talamini, and Page, , Sport and Society, p. 29Google Scholar.

98 Atkinson, , “Fitness,” pp. 126–29Google Scholar; Crichton-Browne, James, “Sex in Education,” Lancet (May 7, 1892), 1011–18Google Scholar; “A Candid Friend on Feminism,” British Medical Journal (October 15, 1910), 1172–73Google Scholar; Dyhouse, Carol, “Towards a ‘Feminine’ Curriculum for English Schoolgirls: the Demands of Ideology 1870–1963,” Women's Studies International Quarterly 1 (1978), 291–311Google Scholar; Dyhouse, Carol, “Social Darwinist Ideas and the Development of Women's Education in England, 1880–1920,” History of Education 5 (1976), 41–58Google Scholar; Duffin, Lorna, “Prisoners of Progress: Women and Evolution,” in Nineteenth Century Woman, eds. Delamont, and Duffin, , pp. 57–91Google Scholar; Gerber, et al., American Woman, pp. 12–17Google Scholar; Kenealy, , ” Woman,” pp. 636–45Google Scholar; Leslie, Murray R., “Women's Progress in Relation to Eugenics,” Eugenics Review 2 (April 1910—January 1911), 282–98Google Scholar; Marks, , “Femininity,” pp. 193–94Google Scholar; Scharlieb, Mary, “Adolescent Girlhood Under Modern Conditions, with Special Reference to Motherhood,” Eugenics Review 1 (April 1909-January 1910), 174–83Google Scholar; Scharlieb, Mary, “The Health of Adolescent Girls in Relation to School Life,” Journal of Education (November 1909), 736–37Google Scholar; Thorburn, John, Female Eduction from a Physiological Point of View (Manchester, 1884)Google Scholar; Pleasaunce Unite, “Disillusioned Daughters,” Fortnightly Review 8 (November 1, 1900), 850–57Google Scholar; Weiss, Paul, Sport: A Philosophic Enquiry (Carbondale, Ill., 1969), pp. 214–15, 228Google Scholar; Withers-Moore, Dr., “The Higher Education of Women,” British Medical Journal (August 4, 1886), 295–99Google Scholar; Zeigler, Earle F., Physical Education and Sports Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977), pp. 175–77Google Scholar.

99 Edwards, , Sociology of Sport, pp. 102–03, 227–30Google Scholar; Felshin, , “Triple Option,” p. 431Google Scholar; Hart, Marie M., “Stigma or Prestige: The All American Choice,” in Sport in the Socio-Cultural Process, ed. Hart, M.M., p. 177Google Scholar; Talamini and Page; Sport and Society, pp. 271–72.

100 Gathorne-Hardy, , Public School Phenomenon, p. 273Google Scholar.

101 Burstall, , English High Schools, pp. 90–91Google Scholar; Dove, Jane Frances, “The Modern Girl: How far are we fitting her for her varied duties in life?” Wycombe Abbey Gazette 3 (November 1907), 161–62Google Scholar; Edwards, , Sociology of Sport, pp. 102–03, 227–30Google Scholar; Ellsworth, , Liberators, pp. 200, 287Google Scholar; Gathorne-Hardy, , Public School Phenomenon, pp. 273–74Google Scholar; Gorham, , Victorian Girl, pp. 105–18Google Scholar; Hargreaves, , “Playing Like Gentlemen,” pp. 138–82Google Scholar; Kennard, , “Women, Sport and Society,” p. 181Google Scholar; Okely, , “Privileged, Schooled and Finished,” p. 109Google Scholar.

102 Gorham, , Victorian Girl, pp. 96–97Google Scholar; Edwards, , Sociology of Sport, p. 355Google Scholar.

103 Edwards, , Sociology of Sport, p. 348Google Scholar; Ingham, Alan G. and Loy, John W., “The Social System of Sport: A Humanistic Perspective,” in Sport in the Socio-Cultural Process, ed. Hart, M.M., p. 245Google Scholar; Sevan, Martha M.. “A Theoretical Consideration of the Internal Dynamics of Sport,” in Sport in the Socio-Cultural Process, ed. Hart, M.M., p. 222Google Scholar.

104 Atkinson, , “Fitness,” pp. 113, 127–29Google Scholar; Gerber, , American Woman, pp. 12–13, 191–92, 203Google Scholar; Gerber, , “Changing Female Image,” p. 59Google Scholar; Hargreaves, , “Playing Like Gentlemen,” pp. 57, 86Google Scholar; Kennard, , “Women, Sport and Society,” p. 182Google Scholar. It is difficult to appreciate how much the clothes of the Victorian period affected women's physical activities. Cumbersome and tight, they made rapid and vigorous movement virtually impossible, dictated the habits of body in which girls were trained, and generally reflected social attitudes towards women's restricted sphere. The question of what to wear for athletic activity was long a vexing one, for it involved the necessity to allow freedom of movement without offending propriety.

The development of the box-pleated gym tunic at Madame Bergman-Osterberg's physical training college about 1893 eventually created a revolution in sporting dress. Meanwhile schools like St. Leonards and Roedean developed their own sports costumes, which preluded the school uniform and which were worn only within the private confines of school play-grounds—blue serge, long-sleeved, knee-length dresses over bloomers, and stockings.

At women's colleges games playing also produced a rationalizing of dress, as did the advent of the bicycle. However, because participants were adults, modesty was particularly essential, and innovation was limited to shortening skirts so that they were six to eight inches off the ground.

Despite limitations, the participation of women in physical activities was responsible for bringing some comfort and ease into women's fashions. Thus, the evolution of the sports costume is a significant aspect of the larger stories of women and sport and women's emancipation, and deserves detailed study elsewhere. See Atkinson, , “Fitness,” pp. 117–20Google Scholar; Burstall, , English High Schools, p. 96Google Scholar; Cunnington, C. W., English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1937)Google Scholar; Cunnington, P. and Mansfield, A., English Costume for Sports and Outdoor Recreation (London; 1969)Google Scholar; Ewing, Elizabeth, Women in Uniform Through the Centuries (London, 1975), pp. 68–74Google Scholar; Kunzle, David, Fashion and Fetishism (London, 1982), pp. 46–47Google Scholar; Thomas, C.E., ed., Athletic Training for Girls (London, 1912), pp. 60–67Google Scholar.

105 Burstall, , English High Schools, p. 101Google Scholar; Edwards, , Sociology of Sport, p. 231Google Scholar; Felshin, , “Triple Option,” pp. 432–33Google Scholar; Gorham, , Victorian Girl, pp. 56–94Google Scholar; Perry, Evelyn M., “School Games,” Teachers' Guild Quarterly (March 1910), 16–17Google Scholar; Thomas, , Athletic Training, pp. 10–17Google Scholar.

106 Hargreaves, , “Playing Like Gentlemen,” pp. 200–01Google Scholar.

107 Hargreaves, , “Playing Like Gentlemen,” p. 87Google Scholar.

108 Felshin, , “Triple Option,” pp. 432–33Google Scholar; Stone, , “On Women,” pp. 43–44Google Scholar; Summers, Anne, Damned Whores and God's Place: The Colonization of Women in Australia (London, 1975), p. 86Google Scholar; Talamini, and Page, , Sport and Society, p. 32Google Scholar; Thomas, , Athletic Training, pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

109 GPDST, Norwich High School, p. 39Google Scholar.

110 Ignota, , “Fair Sportswomen,” Harmsworth Magazine 3 (August 1899–January 1900), 173Google Scholar.

111 Edwards, , Sociology of Sport, p. 355Google Scholar; Talamini, and Page, , Sport and Society, pp. 271–72Google Scholar; Yiannakis, et al., Sport Sociology, pp. 207–09Google Scholar.

112 Felshin, , “Triple Option,” pp. 431–35Google Scholar.

113 Ibrahim, Hilmi, Sport and Society: An Introduction to the Sociology of Sport (Long Beach, 1976), pp. 173, 183Google Scholar.

114 Thomas, , Athletic Training, pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

115 Yiannakis, et al., Sport Sociology, pp. 207–09Google Scholar.

116 Atkinson, , “Fitness,” p. 92Google Scholar; Felshin, , “Triple Option,” pp. 434–35Google Scholar; Gorham, , Victorian Girl, p. 106Google Scholar; Hargreaves, , “Playing Like Gentlemen,” pp. 74, 83, 92Google Scholar.