1892 on Horseback - Where Women Ride Astride

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December 3, 1892 – Harper’s Weekly

WHERE WOMEN RIDE ASTRIDE

Several of the ladies of the Devonshire and Somerset (England) Stag Hunt are now riding to the chase as men do—that is, astride. To the conventional mind this is truly startling, but the ladies are commended by a writer as having the courage of their convictions, and furthermore, says the scribe, “the phenomenon no longer appears a phenomenon, so common has it become.”

This suggests the historic questions, “What are we coming to?” or the latest version of the same, “Where are we at?” This is certainly an advance in Woman’s Rights, and far ahead of anything in our own country—outside of a circus and a few isolated instances where necessity knew no law. It would be hard to imagine a phenomenon so common in our native land.

The American girl, at whom the Continent stands aghast, does not go in for this sort of thing like our fair English cousins. “A long riding coat, breeches, and top-boots” may proclaim the courageous English woman, and although a high hat, trousers, and Prince Albert coat have been adopted by certain females in this free country, there is nothing common about it, nor does it bid fair to become at all popular. In Dahomey they have Amazons—or rather had them, since the French have now conquered that province; and in England certain Dianas suggest those creatures which once were thought to exist alone in fable. Of course if women want to ride astride they are at liberty to do so; but seriously speaking, it is not at all likely that many will avail themselves of the privilege.

Most men have a reverence for gentle woman, especially for a true womanly woman; and with all due regard to the ladies who choose to ride as men, the latter really do not care to see the practice universally adopted. They are not jealous of their rights, but they are of their ideals, and to see a woman cantering about the country astride a horse would serve to shatter such ideals.

That, at least, is how some men feel on the subject; others may be more liberal, but their ideals are not the same by any means. Precedent has declared how women should ride, and to do contrary to precedent is to call forth criticism which the true and womanly woman avoids and shrinks from. But the question is not answered by any means, and perhaps it depends altogether upon what society may say, and there is no accounting for society’s verdicts.

From "Daughters of the Lost Century"

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