The Eternally Wounded Woman
About the Book
From the introduction:"This book is about the historical influence of late nineteenth-century medical beliefs and values on the perceived benefits of physical activity for women across their life span. The practice of medicine and the knowledge which underpins it have never been simple and logical progressions from one truth to another. Rather, scientific knowledge, medical practice and social perception have interacted to affect views concerning what kinds of amounts of physical activity, including sport and healthful exercise, might be most appropriate for girls and women at different points in their life course.
"A review of thinking is needed in the field of sociohistorical analysis concerning attitudes toward the female body and attempts to regulate female physical activity. Such analyses may generate new insights into the questions of both social control and the unevenness of progress in women's real or perceived opportunities for participating freely and fully in sports and exercise of their choice."
About the Author
Patricia A. Vertinsky is a professor of kinesiology at the University of British Columbia.Reviews
"Vertinsky shows how pervasive was the notion that the male is the standard, the normal, and the female, deviant or inadequate. She is convincing when she musters the evidence, using exercise as her focus, to debunk the idea of the 'eternally wounded female' who cannot measure up to men."--Victorian Review"Shows convincingly that middle-class women in the late nineteenth century were seriously inhibited by medical ideologies and that those [ideologies] pertaining to exercise for females actually became powerful forms of social control over women's lives. An excellent piece of historical research."--British Medical Journal
"An important addition to the rapidly expanding history of middle-class women. The arguments are balanced, reasoned, and free of the diatribes that sometimes attend this subject."--Social History of Medicine
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