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Though millions of women drive daily, the idea of the flighty "woman driver" remains commonplace in popular parlance and imagery. How did this stereotype evolve, and what does its history reveal about us? As Virginia Scharff shows in this engaging social history, perceptions about gender have continually shaped attitudes toward cars, their use, and their design since the first horseless carriages hit the road at the turn of the century.
Traveling back in time, Scharff explores how the first autos collided with Victorian notions of woman's nature and abilities. While men purportedly enjoyed a sympathetic relationship with cars (mastering their machines with strength, fearlessness, and skill), women were seen as too dependent, fastidious, and fumbling to tame the new beasts of the road. And because almost all of the early woman motorists were wealthy and leisured, the public soon came to associate their driving with wastefulness and frivolity. Scharff demonstrates how, far from its being an isolated issue, the acceptance of woman drivers touched a raw nerve in the nation which reverberated in controversies raging over women's access to higher education, voting, and the professional work world.
Scharff gives long-overdue credit to the woman drivers who took to the road for fun, profit, and service to their families and the nation. Here for the first time is the significant impact they had: Suffragists and car buffs, racing champions and World War I ambulance drivers alike, they challenged prevailing notions of "true womanhood" and thereby forced the auto industry to reckon with their presence in the marketplace.
The head-on crash between proper "feminine roles" and the automobile not only produced a new way of life for American women, but also altered America's culture and its landscape. When the auto hastened the spread of cities and the growth of suburbs, middle-class mothers domesticated its use, while other American women on wheels continued to test the boundaries of respectable behavior in their experimental joy rides.
Recalling a colorful period of car culture and history Scharff offers a provocative look at the effect of new technologies on a nation's life-styles and on its citizens' self-images and roles.
VIRGINIA SCHARFF teaches history at the University of New Mexico.
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Contents Acknowledgments 1. The Lady and the Mechanic 2. From Passenger to Driver 3. Femininity and the Electric Car 4. Power and Comfort 5. Spectacle and Emancipation 6. Women Drivers in World War I 7. Corporate Masculinity and the "Feminine" Market 8. Women at the Wheel in the 1920s 9. Reinventing the Wheel Illustrations |
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