One striking element in Victorian forms of recreation and entertainment is that they were, for the most part, active. The age of passive entertainment - of watching television or listening to the radio - had not yet arrived. In short, one had to make one's own fun. And Victorians had many ways of doing that.
For starters, entertainment was often a shared activity rather than a solitary one. Social entertainments, such as outdoor sports or indoor games, were plentiful. This was the era of parlor games, of home theatricals and charades, and of social gatherings such as book clubs.
In the earlier part of the Victorian period, women's pastimes were often limited to indoor activities. Victorian magazines offer a host of arts and crafts features (which we cover in the Arts & Crafts section), and it seems that the Victorian woman was probably expected to stay quietly at home with her needlework while the males of the household went out and played cricket or hunted or whatever. This began to change in the late 1880's, when one sees more and more articles addressing the question of whether a woman should be able to participate in outdoor, competitive sports such as tennis, cricket, hockey, etc. One of the great controversies of the time centered on whether women should ride bicycles - an activity that was decried as unladylike and possibly damaging to a woman's health. Women ignored such concerns and cycling became a major women's "craze" in the 1890's. By that time, women were also happily playing cricket, hockey, tennis, and most other sports formerly considered "men's" activities. Recreation was no longer divided along gender lines!
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