Mary Sargent Hopkins

Mary Sargent Hopkins, also known as Miss "Merrie Wheeler" and The "Outdoor Woman", was an American women's health advocate and bicycle enthusiast who promoted the domestic role of a woman.

Life

Born in 1847 in Lynn, Massachusetts to the Neal family, Hopkins grew up not well off in society. Hopkins' father was a shoemaker in Lynn, Massachusetts, and later moved their family to Nyack, New York to enlist himself in the Union Army. After moving to Nyack, NY, Hopkins married John B. Reynolds, a writer and photographer. They soon after divorced, leading Hopkins to move to Brooklyn, New York where she married her second husband, Charles Hopkins. Charles Hopkins' father owned a furniture and bedding store in Boston, Massachusetts, leading the couple to move to the Boston area soon after their marriage due to his father's passing in around 1885. The couple initially lived in Boston, then moved to Medford, and moved again to Melrose. They had a son named Ernest and a granddaughter named Constance. Charles Hopkins died sometime between 1906 and 1910, which led for Mary Sargent Hopkins to move back to Manhattan. Hopkins lived there until sometime in the 1920s, before her death in 1924, and passed at a friend's home in Pembroke, Massachusetts at the age of 77.

During her marriage to Charles Hopkins, Hopkins became a politically engaged middle-class woman. As part of the mid-1890s great cycling boom, Hopkins conducted her own cycling magazine and published many articles regarding this topic.

Work

The work of Hopkins had a target audience of women, specifically in New York, Chicago, and Boston, who were considered to have been affluent and progressive, but also respectable in society's terms. Before the establishment of her own cycling magazine, Hopkins published individuals articles in Bicycling World and L.A.W. Bulletin, New England Kitchen Magazine and Good Housekeeping,The New York Times, Haper's Bazaar, and Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. Hopkins was also the founder and editor of the magazine The Wheelwoman, describing herself as a conductor of the magazine, which was a popular periodical for women's cyclist. The Wheelwoman was published monthly out of Hopkins' office in Boston and was in print from February 1895 to December 1897, and possibly longer. Hopkins utilized The Wheelwoman as a way to showcase cycling to women as something that is part of social reform and physical well-being.

It has been found that Hopkins' had a three step strategy to get herself and her work to be well known. First, she argues that the acceptance of women' sport is due to "the pioneer women" and not medical professionals who authorized such activities. Secondly, Hopkins utilized this women-centered narrative to position herself as the current expert on women's exercise due to her own experiences. Lastly, Hopkins used her established ethos as an expert on women's sport to conduct journalistic pieces that promoted her specific views on the modern active women. Through this, Hopkins generated a conservative ideal that she called "the renewed women".

The period in which Hopkins wrote and published her work was one where women were not considered to be experts in journalism or medicine. Hopkins never had any sort of medical or formal training, and admits in her paper "The Horseless Carriage" that what she wrote about was not a scientific point of view, but a popular one.

Published works

• Easter Morn, poetry, 1882
• Sketches and reminiscences of the Radical Club of Chestnut Street, Boston, book, 1880
• THE TRIALS OF MRS. JULIA O'GRADY.: (As Related by Herself.) II.--MARY ELLEN BECOMES A "READER., magazine article, 1900
• Harper's Bazaar article, Vol 29. Issue 11 1896
• How the Bicycle Won Its Way Among Women magazine article,1896
• The Bicycle For Women, magazine article, 1893
• The Horseless Carriage, magazine article, 1899
• The Outdoor Woman: The American Woman In Action, magazine article, 1899
• The Web of Life, magazine article, 1895

Scholarship on Hopkins

Many scholars believe that Hopkins was known for her role in the women's rights, temperance, and abolition movements in the late 1800s. But, many also believe the majority of her work does not directly address these issues. One theory that some scholars have is that Hopkins, whose audience was middle class women, wanted to evoke change in a gradual way to comfort her audience, explaining why she pushed for the domesticity and femininity of women. Hopkins did not want to push too much change and scare off her target audience; if she had done so, many women may have become in opposition to Hopkins' work. Others believe Hopkins was reacting in opposition to influences in her life to defend the status quo.

In addition to this, some disagree with Hopkins' message that women should ride bicycles to better their life in the home. Believing that her work is contradictory in nature, some scholars believe her message to not align with what she was fighting for. Hopkins believed that women cycling would fix issues within their home life, make the women more attractive physically, and help them perform their domestic duties better, which some may argue go against the values being fought for in the women's rights movement. Although this is true, she was still influential in evoking change and movement for women's rights. For example, Susan B. Anthony's famous quote, "Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than perhaps anything else in the world”, has been tied back to Hopkins. While some argue that even though the work of Hopkins ended up helping the women's rights movement, it was not Hopkins' intention for her work to end up in this direction.

Legacy

Hopkins helped women to start utilizing bicycles in a time where bicycling was abnormal for a woman. In fact, Hopkins herself believed that it was her work and the "pioneer women" alone, not physicians, that led to women partaking in outdoor activities.. Hopkins became the face of women on bicycles, and is said to be a champion of women's health.

Although a women's activist, Hopkins did not have the typical beliefs that many other feminist during this time had. Hopkins believed that while a woman should partake in outdoor activities, she must still appear to be feminine. Hopkins in a New York Times article, titled "Women's Wheeling Dress", explained how Hopkins disliked when women portrayed themselves in a manner that men typically would have during this era, calling these women "creatures" and "a disgrace". Hopkins disagreed with the idea that women using bicycles were bending gender norms and were "new women", rather they were utilizing bikes to enhance women's lives within gender constructs.

The work of Hopkins helped pave the way for women everywhere to use bicycles, and even though her target audience was not all women, women everywhere used the implications of her work to make a change. In the nineteenth century, women of all races, class, ethnicities, and religions started to utilize bicycles, which was previously limited to a specific demographic of white and middle to upper class women. Minority women had to fight for their social space, and decided to take on bicycling as a way to do this. In addition to this, minority and immigrant women worked to get rid of the long-skirted Victorian dress code, some women entered the skilled occupation of bicycle repair, and others partook in bicycle racing.

Although controversial to some due to her views, Hopkins was able to successfully help pave the way for women partaking in outdoor activities to be a norm.