Physical culture and the body beautiful : purposive exercise in the lives of American women, 1800-1870
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Physical culture and the body beautiful : purposive exercise in the lives of American women, 1800-1870
Mercer University Press, c1998
1st ed
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [305]-354) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In examining the course of the debate between the philosophies of Rousseau and Wollstonecraft in the first seventy years of the nineteenth century, several important conclusions have been reached. First, a much more diverse spectrum of women's exercise existed in the antebellum era than is currently described in modern historical texts. Second, several exercise systems had significant links to an ideal of womanhood - called in this text Majestic Womanhood - which directly competed with the prevailing construct of the ideology of True Womanhood articulated by historian Barbara Welter. Third, purposive training mattered in the lives of American women influencing them physically, intellectually, and emotionally. In many instances this training empowered women to step beyond the confines of their separate sphere of domestic duty and involve themselves in the world outside their homes.
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