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

Oral PE History - Essay ExampleStereotypical ideas of True cleaning ladyhood 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 Strains life experiences as a pip-squeak growing up in 1960s suburban Detroit will be related to these social and cultural concepts.Wendy Strain is a 50 year grey 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 powerfully adhered to the concepts of the True Woman. 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, submi ssiveness 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 linking morality to a figure (rhetorically) immune to the self-interest and opposition integral to economic success, the cult preserved virtue without inhibiting productivity thus creating a perfect world in which men were free to pursue every visible 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. St rain indicates