Mary Sargent Hopkins

Mary Sargent Hopkins, an American columnist, lecturer and women's cycling activist. Photo published in 1893. Mary Sargent Hopkins, also known as Miss "Merrie Wheeler" and The "Outdoor Woman", Hopkins' father, Walter Neal, was a shoemaker in Lynn, Massachusetts, where he and his wife, Lydia Blabon, moved to after living in rural New England. Later, the couple moved their family to Nyack, New York so Neal could enlist himself in the Union Army. As part of the mid-1890s great cycling boom, Hopkins conducted her own cycling magazine called "The Wheelwoman" and published many articles regarding this topic.

Scholars have suggested that Hopkins' had a three step strategy to get herself and her work to be well known. And that if a woman does not go outdoors, it is also due to her own choice. Hopkins utilizing a popular point of view instead of a scientific one is significant from a feminist standpoint as it embodies feminist theory. Feminist theory helps to address unequal and oppressive gender relations, which Hopkins does in her advocacy work regarding women being outdoors. Using a popular and opinionated point of view puts things into the perspective of a feminist lens, which enables a change and offers solutions by looking at the debated topic through lived experiences. Putting things into the perspective of a feminist lens may have been hard to do if Hopkins was explaining things from a scientific point of view as there was not much research on women's bodies during this era. In addition to this, scholars have found that when discussing gender and gender oppression, it is most effective to utilize this feminist lens and feminist literary criticism, highlighting the feminist significance of Hopkins' work and why her work may have been effective.

Besides Hopkins, there were other individuals during this era that were also bicycle enthusiasts, most notably Abbot Bassett and Kitte Knox.

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, scholars do acknowledge that 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 as she did not share the beliefs with women's rights activists.

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. No scholar has been found to refer to Hopkins as a feminist, but she is considered to have been an individual who was politically engaged, an avid cyclist, and a leading advocate for women's cycling and outdoor activities.

Although a women's activist, Hopkins did not have the typical beliefs that many other feminists 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 it when women portrayed themselves in a manner that men typically would have during this era, calling these women "creatures" and "a disgrace", and believing them to have been "obnoxious". 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.

Although not her intention, 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. Some scholars claim that some women during this era would have agreed that the bicycle had a revolutionary impact on women. But, scholars also argue that naturalizing the impact the bicycle had on women is problematic as it was not naturally revolutionary, but the bike was used as a medium by cyclists without a formal education, like Hopkins, to create an argument for their own beliefs and goals. So, although Hopkins was an avid cyclist, many believe that she only advocated the usage of bikes for the popularity of her own beliefs; that women should be outside more to better their performance in the home. Scholars believe that Hopkins thought of the bicycle as the best method to expand women's opportunities in self-improvement, not to make a revolutionary political change. Hopkins utilized the bicycle, which she refers to as her "faithful ally", to reinforce dominant ideology regarding societal gender norms by arguing that the bicycle would better women's lives if they stay within social constructs. Hopkins never agreed with women going against gender norms and only referred to the bicycle as something that was beneficial to those women who believed in female domestic roles. It is still a question of whether or not Hopkins would have been considered a feminist as it is difficult to distinguish her stance due to her beliefs on the expansion for women's roles and her confirmed thoughts on traditional gender roles. What is clear though is that she believed that it is beneficial for women to be outdoors and that women should still conform to traditional social norms, with women partaking in outdoor activities being the only thing that should change.