She's a Knockout!

by L. A. Jennings

  While the Times may be complimentary to the female fighters in its account of the 1805 fight, just two years later, on March 24, 1807, the newspaper changed its tone when it reported on an organized bout between two women. The paper says the following about a boxing match between Betty Dyson and Mary Mahoney:

  There were several fights amongst the lower orders, on Sunday morning, near Hornsey wood; but the one which must afford the most disgust, was between two women, Betty Dyson, a vender of sprats, and Mary Mahoney, a market woman. These Amazons fought upward of forty minutes, and were both hideously disfigured by hard blows. The contest was for five guineas.[31]

  This description was, perhaps, a premonition of the coming era of strict morality and clear gender boundaries brought forth by the young Queen Victoria. The “disgust” with which the author recounts the fight contrasts sharply with the story of Miss B***r from 1805. Both articles describe the female fighters as “Amazons,” but the earlier version delights in the idea of fearless British women, while the 1807 story focuses on their “hideously disfigured” faces after the bout. This two-year period indicates the cultural shift in Britain between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where frailty was prized over female strength. The days of the Amazons, the female pugilists who were heroines of Britain, were in danger.

  Nineteenth-Century Medicine

  There are brief stories of women’s boxing in nineteenth-century England, although none of the figures from this time period approached the dominating appearance of Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes in the 1720s. In the early nineteenth century, some upper-class women began to practice sports, but these activities were, for the most part, intended to assuage boredom rather than demonstrate physical prowess. Aristocratic women practiced archery, played cricket, and rode horses, but the social norm in the Victorian age was for women to be frail and delicate rather than strong and robust. The literature of the day, coupled with the example from Queen Victoria, promotes the image of the beautiful and fragile heroine. Bram Stoker’s Dracula contains two female heroines, Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra, who are delicate, pale, and beautiful. Stoker presents these women in opposition to three female vampires, who are described as voluptuous and ruddy. The frailty of Mina and Lucy makes them good, while the vigorous sensuality of the vampires both arouses and repulses the male characters. Many other Victorian-era texts prized delicately pale and weak women, yet viewed strong, healthy women as somehow unfeminine. This taste for weak femininity created a cultural reproof for women who seemed more robust. While the upper classes in Britain and the United States may have admired frailty in women, the lower ones did not share that preference. Obviously, working-class women needed strength to do daily work, and voluptuousness or ruddiness of color indicated to men a wife’s potential to both work and reproduce.

  Such novels as Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856), Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1873–1877), and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) explore the boredom and ennui common to middle- and upper-class women in the nineteenth century. Many women were described as frail, unable to get out of bed, depressed, and, in the new signifier of the era, suffering from some form of hysteria. Male physicians encouraged their female patients to withdraw from any and all creative pursuits, limiting their daily activities to the rearing of their family and caring for themselves. “Celebrated” female specialist Dr. S. Weir Mitchell told his patient, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a budding writer and new mother suffering from postpartum depression, to “live as domestic a life as possible. . . . Have but two hours intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush, or pencil as long as you live.”[32] Gilman claimed that she nearly went crazy and diagnosed herself as suffering from depression because she wanted to be an activist, not a domestic goddess. Gilman went on to write the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” about her experience with depression and ill treatment via the medical community.

  The medical community has been historically obsessed with female bodies, probably because the vast majority of doctors, healers, researchers, and quacks were men. Women were told that their bodies were weak, substandard, diseased, and problematic by the scientific community, which was seemingly bent on disparaging and controlling the female population. Through the guise of science, women were controlled, regulated, and relegated to purely domestic roles. And while we may chuckle at the outdated notions regarding female bodies, a number of these “scientific” notions about women continue to permeate society, especially in the realm of sports. Female athletes continue to be the subject of medical debate, especially in the “bro-sciences” of exercise and nutrition.

  Fashioning the Female Body in the

  Nineteenth Century

  Fashion was another insidious, albeit sometimes fabulous, way of controlling women in the nineteenth century. According to the Survey of Historic Costume, “women who dressed in the most stylish gowns of the 1830s and 1840s, when sleeves were set low on the shoulder, would not have been able to raise their arms above their heads and were virtually incapable of performing any physical labor.”[33] Wide skirts, bustles, and corsets made it difficult for middle- and upper-class women to move, much less breathe. As a result, throughout the century, attempts were made by some women to find a style of clothing that would not restrain them, but allow them to participate in exercise and not destroy their vital organs. Corsets were made to cut higher on the thighs, allowing for better movement, and the hard matter that shaped the garment was changed to a more flexible material. While these changes helped women breathe a little easier, the idea of the cessation of the corset was not popular.

  The majority of fashion criticism came from health reformers who believed the corset to be dangerous and deforming of the body; however, most reformers did not call for the end of corseting, but an augmentation of the corset so that it would longer destroy women’s vital organs. Historians note that the corset was deemed an essential part of female dress, and while it may have been refashioned to alleviate some of the pressure on major organs, no woman, even those in the lower classes, would agree to stop wearing this staple undergarment.

  But dress reform was a prominent issue in the late nineteenth century. Some publications suggested that certain aspects of clothing be reformed, for instance, overly tight corsets, but nothing was advised that would demean women or create a new dress code that was immodest or unbecoming. The Bloomer costume, named after feminist leader Amelia Bloomer, was created by Elizabeth Smith Miller and consisted of a shorter skirt worn over wide pants. The costume was worn by many feminist reformers, and although it did not become a mode of popular dress, it did influence a gymnastics costume for women.

  The debates that surrounded the corset and other dress practices of the Victorian period were usually gendered. Some men and women believed that the corset and wide hemlines were restricting for women physically and socially, but many women believed these fashion practices to be necessary and important for a gentlewoman. The main problem for women, however, was the social requirement for middle- and upper-class women to wear the corset. The corset had long been associated with the dress practices of the elite, and tradition had made it improper for bourgeois or upper-class women to wear a garment without a corset underneath. Fashion historian and theorist Valerie Steele explains that the “cultural weight placed on propriety and respectability made it difficult for women to abandon the corset, even if they wanted to.”[34] The smooth figure produced by the corset was without any imperfections, and as one fashion writer commented in the late 1870s, “People who refuse to wear any corset at all look very slovenly.”[35] Thus, the corset was required not only to create a perfect figure, but also to display a level of wealth, education, and breeding.

  While corsets had long been associated with upper-class women, as the garment industry became more industrialized, they and many other clothing items that were previously handmade became readily available to the public at a lower cost. The efficiency of the corset factories, along with the publication of fashion tre
nds in many women’s periodicals, resulted in the trickling down of elite trends of the upper and middle classes to the lower, working classes. As the bourgeoisie attempted to differentiate themselves from lower-class women, the newly modernized factories repeatedly imitated the higher-priced corsets and sold them inexpensively. Industrialization not only readily provided inexpensive goods like clothing, it also led to more jobs and, therefore, a rapidly expanding population in the cities. During this time, all women were able to keep up with current fashions by using lesser-quality material and less decorative accents than that used in the clothing worn by the bourgeoisie. The corset and the phenomenon of tight-lacing became more popular as products became more available.

  Regardless of social status, the Victorian woman wore a corset to convey a sense of elegance and try to make her waist as small as possible. While the lower classes struggled to keep up with the major fashion trends of the day, middle- and upper-class women attempted to distinguish themselves from their maids. The body of a laborer should, by class standards, be a harder, more callous form than that of a feminine and dainty member of the elite, but a slender waist was a desirable quality that indicated beauty and class. Although the corset was a sign of conspicuous leisure and often physically debilitating for women, many of the working class still toiled while wearing their corsets.

  Sporting Life in the Nineteenth Century

  In addition to the medical and sartorial customs that restricted the movement of the female body, social hierarchies often determined who could and should practice a specific type of sporting activity. Aristocratic women were limited to walking as exercise, primarily as an activity to improve posture. In Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), the Bingley sisters are horrified that Elizabeth Bennett would walk three miles through wet fields to visit her ill sister. The sisters display their usual cattiness toward Elizabeth’s general appearance, from her windblown hair and ruddy cheeks to her mud-encrusted petticoats, but the true disgust seems to come from her willingness to walk rather than call for a carriage, as any middle- or upper-class lady would do. Yet, later in the evening, Miss Bingley invites Lizzie Bennett to walk around the room with her after dinner, apparently, as Mr. Darcy says, “because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking.”[36]

  But beyond walking and perhaps riding horses, women in the early nineteenth century were not encouraged to exercise. Lower-class and country women were not restricted in the same manner, primarily because they were expected to do some form of manual labor as part of their social position. Women in the lower echelons of society had more freedom to pursue sports than their middle- and upper-class sisters, but the move toward increased education for women, which often included exercise as part of the mission, ignored the women in the lower classes.

  School Athletics

  The educational reforms of the nineteenth century built upon the ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft and other feminists (although the term feminist is decidedly anachronistic, since it was not used at that time). Public and private schools existed in England, the new United States, and abroad prior to the nineteenth century, but during that century, exercise became a focus of numerous educational institutions. Each school had its own assortment of calisthenics or exercises that female students performed. Although none were designed to be especially strenuous, many British schools eventually included a “Sports Day” dedicated to footraces, tennis matches, and other games. The inclusion of team sports in the latter part of the nineteenth century led to a period of intense competiveness amongst students.

  Jennifer Hargreaves relates in her book Sporting Females that girls at the Roedean public school in Sussex practiced so rigorously for their sport that “half the girls could show their heads above the horizontal bar from a hanging position, and nearly every girl could go hand over hand up the sixteen-foot rope.”[37] While the acceptance and institutionalization of female athletics grew in British and American schools for middle- and upper-class girls, the lower tiers of society did not receive the same type of benefits. Like the experience of young Jane Eyre, the titular heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, charity schools did not typically provide students with the nonacademic activities found in the institutions of the higher classes. Of course, many families in the country, as well as poverty-stricken families, did not send their children, much less their daughters, to school. Yet, sports thrived in these environments, especially such “low-life” sports as boxing and wrestling, which were practiced by men and women, and thus boys and girls, alike. And it was among the lower classes that the story of “Bruising Peg” became part of boxing history, both in historical documentation and sensationalized fiction.

  The Diary of Margaret “Bruising Peg” Malloy

  In Britain, the nineteenth century was not a time of prolific female fighting, although several names stand out in the archives. Margaret Malloy, known as “Bruising Peg,” is the most frequently cited British female fighter after Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes. Unlike her predecessor, Peg has not become synonymous with British nationalism and the symbol of early female combatives; however, her story was fictionalized in 1898 by Paul Creswick, who “edited, or rather wrote” the journal of “Bruising Peg” and published it in London. Creswick is primarily remembered for his work on the history of the Robin Hood legend, King Arthur, and other popular culture narratives, with such enigmatic titles as At the Sign of the Cross Keys (1896), The Temple of Folly (1898), and The Ring of Pleasure (1911). A prolific writer who has sadly become lost in the depths of English literary history, Creswick appears to have had a predilection for exploring sensational topics. He concocted the story of Margaret Molloy in Bruising Peg: Pages from the Journal of Margaret Molloy, 1768–9.

  Like many other literary texts at the time that were advertised as “found documents,” a trope more commonly used in detective fiction, Creswick’s role as “editor” rather than “author” was meant to lend a sense of authenticity to the novel. While his book is undoubtedly fiction, the framing of the female fighter reveals the muddy Victorian attitude toward such topics. Victorians approached sex, violence, and other issues of morality with a seemingly divided attitude of fascination and disgust. Creswick’s portrayal of “Bruising Peg” is simultaneously sympathetic and dismissive; the perfect tone for a sensationalizing Victorian novel about female aberration. Although Peg’s journal is fiction, the story is useful for this book. This analysis starts by examining Creswick’s rendition of the famous boxer and then explores her position in the historical record in comparison with this narrative.

  Bruising Peg begins with the following poem, which reads like a Muhammad Ali rhyme:

  I can dance a minuet, and curtsey as graceful as you please;

  and I know the art of boxing as you know your ABC.

  I will fight a duello with the point one day,

  no doubt—may you be there to mark my victory![38]

  Peg’s journal includes her intimate thoughts, from her concerns regarding her lover to detailed depictions of her fights based on Creswick’s understanding of eighteenth-century pugilism. While describing her first fight against “Hannah,” a less experienced woman whom Peg claims she could have killed in the ring but decided not to, Peg reveals that she removed her bodice, slipped her underclothes down to her waist, and hiked her skirt about her knees. In case the reader assumes that this simply meant that the women were still covered in a final layer, Peg describes the breasts and stomach of her opponent.

  The idea that women historically fought topless or in the nude is not a revelation. Drawings from the same time period in France depict women boxing with breasts bared and skirts drawn up around the waist, and in many non-European fighting traditions, from Africa to South America, women wrestled and performed other physical activities wearing little to no clothing, although large amounts of fabulous jewelry were often worn. In Britain, however, where the social stigma of a bare ankle, let alone naked thigh or stomach flesh, could start tongue
s wagging about a highly born woman, the reality of topless women fighting in public was unlikely. In his epically titled tome The Amusements of Old London; being a survey of the sports and pastimes, tea gardens and parks, playhouses and other diversions of the people of London from the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century (1901), William Boulton recounts Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes and her opponent fighting in “close jacket, short petticoats, and Holland drawers, and with white stockings and pumps.”[39] Whether Creswick may have furtively fantasized about topless women fighting or simply wished to titillate the reader, the scene described by Peg reads more about class than the sartorial choices of female fighters.

  Yet, in the novel, Peg appears nonchalant about the idea of bearing her breasts in public. She recalls that upon her arrival, several men yelled at her to undress, but she declined, preferring to wait until her opponent arrived, not because she did not want to seem unseemly, but because she was concerned that she might be cold. But if Peg and Hannah were indeed cold just prior to their fight, the instant the bell rang, the action inside the ring was hot. Peg describes her mental processes throughout the fight with incredible detail in a manner that would resonate with any modern fighter: “This is what always happens. The world suddenly narrows to one woman, and that woman is battling with me. I swear to you that I see nothing else; I feel nothing but a savage fury of delight. That she hurts me is one of the keen joys that flow exaltingly through my person.”[40]