Recent research reveals that women have written about sport for centuries in disparate eras and cultures, yet most of their writings have been, as women have been, ignored and marginalized, their voices drowned out by the dominant male voice in literature. Anthologies devoted to sport, even those purported to be general and inclusive, continue to exclude women’s writings, and many of those works that have been published remain on the periphery in little-known journals and magazines.
Analyses of women’s writings (poetry, fiction, prose memoirs, sport journalism, and drama) about sport, exercise, play, dance, and physical activity suggest that these writings are diverse in terms of voice, character, setting, and activities, yet they tend to share one resounding theme that unites these works and their themes: the impulse to be free, to be liberated from the confining expectations of others and the control that those expectations have over the minds and bodies of women. According to Alicia Ostriker, author of Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America, this “quest for autonomous self-definition and self-determination . . . [the need] to define oneself as authentically as possible from within” is the principal theme in women’s poetry in America. Essentially this is a search for an identity that is personally experienced and defined, rather than an identity created by others.
In search of their own identity in the masculine arena of sport, women
initially experienced sport as outsiders and some of the earliest works
explore the theme of exclusion. Somewhat later, when women enter
sport as participants rather than as spectators, the quest for identity
and freedom emerge as common themes in these writings. Once inside
sport, as participants, the experience of the body becomes paramount
and central to many of the writings. And the connections
with the body are then turned toward connections with nature, the animal
world, and others whom female athletes encounter in sport.
And, lastly, more recent works have tended to reflect on the nature and
significance of sport. (For a more in-depth discussion
of these themes refer to Bandy, Susan J. and Darden, Anne S. Crossing
Boundaries: An International Anthology of Women’s Experiences in
Sport. Champaign: Human Kinetics, 1999).