“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
– Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony’s enthusiasm about the bicycle makes me wonder what she would have thought of a woman driving a car or a woman piloting a plane or a woman flying in a spaceship. At that point in our history, she could hardly imagine a woman filing for divorce or running for Congress or owning property!
Susan B. Anthony did, however, imagine that women could one day legally vote in this country. She devoted her life to that imagining. And what she imagined did indeed come to be.
But even though we still ride bikes with abandon, we are, in 2014, living lives that Susan B. Anthony couldn’t even imagine. We are living, to her, impossible lives.
It makes me wonder if the things that I believe are impossible are actually… possible.
