十九世紀為人類史上社會發展與科技創新鼎盛的時代，發明的科技產品數量亦是前所未見。無論作為運輸工具或者娛樂消遣形式，單車無疑是十九世紀末最具影響力的工業產品之一。由於不斷依大眾需求改進功能，單車成為大眾日常生活中既安全又負擔得起的交通工具選擇，在各種階層與不同性別族群中逐漸流行起來。桃樂斯‧理察森《歷程》中的女主角米莉安在倫敦求職謀生，常於工作閒暇時流連倫敦街道與眾多公共空間，體驗都市生活。如同其他勞動女性，米莉安對於單車這個新機器抱持著濃厚興趣，騎乘單車則是她最喜愛的休閒活動。然而，這種個人移動與娛樂休閒的新模式，與女性騎車的身體動作、活動力與空間移動等議題緊密相關，總是無可避免成為維多利亞時期道德論述的規範與批判標的。艾莉斯‧馬利昂‧楊的女性主義現象學觀點，由探究女性身體舉止、活動力和空間性的身體模態出發，提供了分析上述議題的理論角度。本文試圖援引楊的理論，檢視小說中十九世紀末的勞動階級女性是如何發展騎乘單車的身體經驗，並藉此提出以下論點：騎單車揭示了女性身體在不同空間範疇中的潛能，女性的身體主體性藉由單車此一產物得以具體化呈現，使女性重新發掘自己身體存在的日常潛力與可能性。

The nineteenth century was a period of social progress and technological innovation, a period which saw a more prodigious number of inventions than any preceding era. The bicycle, either as a means of transportation or as a form of recreation, was one of the most influential technical productions in the last decade of the nineteenth century. As the bicycle was gradually improved and became both safe and affordable as an ordinary vehicle in
everyday life, it gained in popularity and exerted the greatest influence on people of different classes and genders. Miriam Henderson, the heroine in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage (1915-67), has a great number of experiences and impressions of London public places and streets. Like other working girls, she is greatly interested in the new machine—the bicycle.
Cycling is one of her favorite pastimes and activities. However, this new mode of personal mobility and recreation is inevitably interlocked with social and cultural mores that influence the perceptions of the female body. There are thus questions to be explored: How was a woman’s bike-riding in the late nineteenth century imbued with the social and cultural beliefs of that time? How was her body oriented or re-molded by this new means of mobility? What specific connection is there between a woman cyclist’s body and the bicycle? As for the above issues, Iris Marion Young’s perspective, combined with a feminist reading of phenomenology, sheds a profound light on the modalities of the female body with concepts
of feminine bodily comportment, motility and spatiality. Employing Young’s theoretical perspective, this paper proposes that although Victorian social and cultural mores influenced the perception of a woman’s body, her body could still take advantage of the bicycle, like the case of Miriam in Pilgrimage. Cycling reveals the woman’s potential in regard to different aspects of mobility, the woman then acquiring certain agency to ride her machine. The woman lives her space through the bicycle since she is the very subject who faces the daily potentiality and possibility of her bodily existence.