Women on Wheels: "A threat at yesterday's order of things"

DEBORAH CLARKE Women on Wheels: "A threat at yesterday's order of things" Every time a woman learns to drive—and thousands do every year—it is a threat at yestetday's order of things. Ray W Sherman, Motor, 1927 rOMEN's access t? the automobile not only threatened "yesterday's order of things," it profoundly transformed American culture and helped to shape twentieth-century American literature . Women generally greeted the car enthusiastically, even privileging it over such basics as food and clothing according to the Lynds' "Middletown" study. "We'd rather do without clothes than give up the car," said one mother. Another woman asserted, "I'll go without food before I'll see us give up the car" (Míacííetown 255, 256). This indeed constitutes a threat to yesterday's order of things—and today's. Clearly, the automobile challenged assumptions about the role of domesticity, female responsibility, and even women's identity. The advent of automobility touched women across the country, helping to break down boundaries between urban and rural life, opening up possibilities, particularly for women, to get out of the house, and, in so doing, also eliding the boundaries of class and gender. No longer relegated to the home, women now drove into the public sphere, exercising control over the latest technology. Christie McGaffey Frederick remarked in a 1912 Suburban Life article, Arizona Quarter^ Volume 59, Number 4, Winter 2003 Copyright © 2003 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-1610 I04Deborah Ciar/ce Learning to handle the car has wrought my emancipation, my freedom, I am no longer a country-bound farmer's wife; I am no longer dependent on tiresome trains, slow-buggies, the "old mare," or the almanac. The auto is the link which binds the metropolis to my pastoral existence; which brings me into frequent touch with the entertainment and life of my neighboring small towns—with the joys of bargains, library and sodawater , (qtd. Berger, "Women Drivers" 57) And once they've tasted soda-water, there's no keeping them down on the farm. For women, then, the car provided access to a wider range of possibilities, erasing isolation, and changing identity: "I am no longer a country-bound farmer's wife." This, of course, is precisely the problem; once a woman becomes a driver, can she still be a wife, or even a woman? What is the link between a woman's driving ability and her literary creativity? These concerns were variously expressed in the popular press, advertising , and literature during the first part ofthe century, as the advent of automobility forced Americans to confront the impact of this new world order. Clearly, the automobile, probably more than any other product, emblemized the epitome ofAmerican identity. It offered individuality , mobility, and class status, reflected technological wizardry and good old American know-how, allowed one simultaneously to enjoy and control nature, and provided speed and power to its driver. As automobile historian James J. Flink has observed, "In a culture that has invariably preferred technological to political solutions to its problems, automobility appeared to the expert and to the man in the street as a panacea for many of the social ills of the day" (38). The appearance, however, did not always match the reality, evidenced by the range of contradictory responses to it. The car seemed to herald a new move into the future, yet it was also presented as a guardian of the past, advertised as means of preserving conservative family traditions. Many commentators and observers were eager to link human identity to this new and powerful machinery. Thus as the industry developed and cars ran off the assembly line, the rush of mobility and power was somewhat constrained by being linked to the forces of mechanical reproduction. The individual autonomy granted by the vehicle began to give way to a sense of mass production. The forces of Taylorism and Fordism, says Women on Wheels105 Martha Banta, produced "a nation whose notion of wholeness was inspired not by Emerson's man redeemed from the ruins but by the Model T" (277). Amidst such tensions, women became a crucial point of articulation around which these contradictions were enacted. In...