ABSTRACT
After earning her pilot’s license in 1928, Louise Thaden detailed what she called ‘the soothing splendor of flight’ amid the high-pressure atmosphere of airborne competition to reach the limits of speed, distance, altitude, and endurance. Describing the power of aerial perspective as well as the sensations and personal meanings of flying, she wrote: I had ‘the ability to go up into God’s heaven, to look toward distant horizons, to gaze down upon the struggling creatures far below, to forget troubles which so short a time before seemed staggering, just to feel the lifting of the wheels from the ground, to hear the rush of air past the cabin window, to squint into the sun, toying with the controls, to feel the exhilaration of power under taut leash, responsive to whim or fancy, to feel, if only for one brief moment, that I could be master of my fate…’ ( Thaden 2004 [1938], 65). For Thaden, as for other women in the late 1920s and early 1930s raised under rigid gender norms and restricted mobility, flying was a practice of liberation.
