Oral PE History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Oral PE History - Essay Example Stereotypical ideas of True Womanhood constrained girls like Wendy into a tightly defined entity in which physical activity was considered too robust a pursuit for a delicate female and negative connotations of the New Woman who was then threatening this Victorian concept further functioned to reduce her available options. To understand how this could be so, Wendy Strain’s life experiences as a child growing up in 1960s suburban Detroit will be related to these social and cultural concepts. Wendy Strain is a 50 year old woman who spent her childhood in a suburb of Detroit in a middle class household with aspirations for greatness. Clinging to the ideals of the gentry of a century earlier, her parents strongly adhered to the concepts of the True Woman. â€Å"The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues – piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife – woman. Without them, no matter whether there was fame, achievement or wealth, all was ashes. With them, she was promised happiness and power† (Welter, 1966: 152). According to Poovey (1988), it was by â€Å"linking morality to a figure (rhetorically) immune to the self-interest and competition integral to economic success, [the cult] preserved virtue without inhibiting productivity† thus creating a perfec t world in which men were free to pursue every material pursuit they wished while women were constrained to remain at home and protect the moral and ethical values of the family unit. A woman could not participate in competitive sport under this ideology not only because it was against the nature of the True Woman to participate in any activity that could not be conducted inside the home, but also because it would have introduced this element of competition that was restricted to the male world. Strain indicates