A significant change seems to have come over college life in the large Eastern colleges for women in the past ten or fifteen years. That in itself is to be expected, considering that they are American institutions and still in existence. Nor is it surprising to find a tendency toward vocational training running parallel and, in some cases, supplanting the older notions of education.
The condition which I observed is not peculiar to my college. A similar phenomenon exists to a certain degree in all the other colleges of its kind.
An English girl once told me something which struck me as curious. She was talking about American women whom she considered interesting, spirited, and charming. "But," she went on, "they have one quality which depresses me frightfully. One of your countrymen explained it to me. He was a very good sort, married to a neighbor of ours. I asked him why he hadn't married an American, and he said, after some complimentary remarks about his wife, that they were too damned practical."
They are practical. There's no denying it. But then we Americans esteem practicality so highly. We honor it as one of the cardinal virtues. It is associated with that admirable condition known as "feet on the ground" as opposed to the more flighty and consequently less desirable "head in the clouds." Not that the modern American woman has any corner on that quality. Women have always been practical, but in other countries and at other times they preferred to veil it. The English Victorian mother was quite as practical in her cunning method of calling attention to her daughters' accomplishments as is the modern parent who pays for special trains from Cambridge, New Haven, and Princeton at the time of her daughters' debut. And under those shining Victorian curls, the daughters' thoughts were revolving about men just as busily as daughters' thoughts do to-day. No weapon could have been more practical than the time-honored helplessness with which they trapped the unwary male.
Such a line of action, however, is scorned to-day in this country. The modern American woman has abandoned - except for dinner parties - the technic of sighing in admiration at man's competence, strength, and general glory. She prefers to admit openly that man is a very useful animal, and proceeds without subterfuge to get what she can out of him.
This very business of selecting man as the central figure in her scheme of life is a most practical procedure. Even a "slightly tired feminist," as Lillian Symes termed herself, admitted in "Still a Man's World" that society is still ordered according to man's rather than woman's demands. Surely the practical way is to admit a situation and then see how much you can get out of it.
It is not surprising to find this practical approach to life with man as the central figure among young women. They see it as the most satisfactory working arrangement - at any rate, the least unsatisfactory one - for getting on in the world. Moreover, this concentration on the opposite sex is entirely natural. Few normal girls prefer spending the evening curled up with a good book to enjoying the society of a personable young man. It is natural enough for girls to think about, talk about - and play about with -young men to the exclusion of almost everything else.
What surprised me was to find them doing it in college.
I do not believe that the girls who were in college when I was there were abnormal. It so happened, however, that before we came to college we had not acquired the habit of depending upon the society of young men to any great extent, and while we were there we had no opportunity of forming it. Fourteen years ago it was not fashionable in college to be concerned with men. We did not talk about them, and what we thought about them we kept to ourselves. I remember the jeers that overwhelmed one little girl named Jane who confessed to having spent the evening talking with her roommates about love and marriage. It was a flagrant breach of etiquette, a lapse of form that branded Jane forever as - in the language of the day - a sad bird.
A few girls were engaged to be married while they were still in college, but they won no glory from that condition. Even the weekly arrival of the American Beauties which were sent them by their fiances aroused no envy in the rest of us. We were, instead, more than a little sorry for them, for they were eternally mooning around, trying to put in the time until they would graduate. We couldn't understand what they were doing in college anyway.
I firmly believe that for most of us the four years of college marked a period of peculiar and intense happiness. I am talking about the average girl who was in college in my time. I am not considering the few who were animated by a spark of genius. They are always outside the rules. Nor am I thinking of the "sad birds"; I mean the large number of girls who may be regarded as typical, whose thoughts and actions set the tone of undergraduate life.
Free from the competition that spontaneously springs up when men come into the picture, we developed - unnaturally perhaps - according to our individual temperaments. College was so vast to our inexperienced eyes, so full of new and delightful opportunities and grave responsibilities. There were so many people to know, so many fields to explore, so much to learn in every direction. For most of us, coming from the strict discipline of boarding school, the simple liberty of being able to sit up all night gave an intoxicating sense of freedom.
It was good form to be at least on speaking terms with a great many girls, not only in one's own class but in all the classes. One had one's particular friends, of course, but most girls did not confine their friendships to any particular group. Kinship of interest was the usual basis for friendship, not similarity of background. If you liked music, or French poetry, or climbing trees, it was fun to be with someone else who liked the same things. There was another element, however, that led to a wide circle of acquaintances - a genuine curiosity about different kinds of people. Without any intention of forming a lifelong intimacy with the Japanese who sat next you in chemistry, you at least wanted to know what she had to say, and what kind of daily lives girls led in Japan.
As far as studies went, we studied the subjects which interested us - that is, as soon as we had got out of the way the courses which were required. The college at that time followed the system of closed marks. No one knew until Senior year what marks she had received since her arrival. The benefits or evils of that plan I am not prepared to discuss. I only know that we were not greatly concerned with working for marks, and I am sure that most of us got a great deal of fun out of our studies. Perhaps we did not work with the zeal that we should, but we enjoyed ourselves. We had a good time while we were working. A friend of mine who was handy with her pencil turned in for Philosophy, not the usual conscientious and unimportant paper, but a series of cartoons that illustrated the theories of Berkeley with zest and humor. I, myself, was feeble at parsing and most uncertain about the Greek accusative, but I had a feeling of intimacy about the week-end parties up at the Sabine Farm; and one girl who never could remember dates is to this day roused to a passion of indignation because Hannibal was such a grand person and had the cards so stacked against him - an emotion that I believe to be of more cultural reality than a record filed somewhere noting honors in history.
Studying was not only work; it spilled over into play. I well remember an impromptu party in honor of Ovid where we draped ourselves in togas composed of sheets and, after a classical if limited menu of olives, cheese, eggs, and milk, put on a topical revue of the grandeur that was Rome which reduced most of the company into convulsions of laughter. Not quite so funny, perhaps, as Mr. Bernard Shaw's excursions into classic fields, but entertaining enough.
This playful attitude towards the study of Latin may not produce many A's, nor is it in any way a scholarly attitude, but I maintain that for the average person it gives something which lasts. I have long since forgotten how to read Latin, and so, I venture, has many a better Latinist than I, but I shall never lose a certain friendly feeling towards Roman boys and girls.
It is conceivable that we might have spent more time in study of a more solid sort had it not been for nonacademic activities. With the utmost enthusiasm we played games, ran magazines, put on plays, sang in the glee club, and busied ourselves with self-government. Our sports were entirely intra-mural. Our college teams never played another college, but the feeling that attended the inter-class contests ran high, and the honor of being chosen for the Varsity team was in no way diminished by the fact that it never went into action. The plays that we directed and acted were not performances of finished artistry, but they had a quality of freshness and verve and were a source of great pleasure to the actors and the audience. For one great factor in college life was an honest co-operation. Those of us who did not play basket ball cheered the team passionately. If we could not act or paint scenery, we applauded those who did. And that applause had mixed with it very little envy. With very few exceptions, the success of the girls prominent in these activities was won to the accompaniment of frank good will from their fellow students.
Even more important, as I see it now, than the organized activities of college life was the manner in which we spent our free time. For in those intervals the real temper of any method of living shows itself most plainly. The casual amusements of the period were almost invariably marked with a touch of creative imagination or artistic appreciation simply because those habits of thought were an integral part of our daily life.
Long walks in the country were very popular. One started out with an apple in one pocket and the Oxford Book of English Verse in the other without self-consciousness or pose. Picnics were another favorite diversion, simple affairs enlivened by feverish discussions as to what Shelley really meant, or by part-singing of ancient songs. There we would sit with torn stockings and untidy hair, comfortably full of doughnuts and a delicious melancholy over the fate of the four Marys.
Considerable time and effort were put, moreover, into activities for which no credits were given, no acclaim won, things that were merely fun to do. Nobody thought it peculiar that certain girls gathered every Sunday night to read Greek with one of the instructors because they liked to read Greek, or that others met regularly to play chamber music for their own pleasure, or that still others enjoyed reading plays aloud. It was thought a waste of time to go to the movies or play bridge because one could do that anywhere. The general opinion was that college offered an opportunity to do things you couldn't do in other places.
There was, to be sure, a certain amount of talk, even then, that college should be made more like the outside world. That quaint old phrase has not been heard, I'll wager, for some time on any campus. The liberals, whose war cry this was, were a fiery few who kept pretty much to themselves, with an occasional sally into town to attend the meetings of the Socialist Club. Their arguments, although intense, had very little effect on the majority of the undergraduates. We were having too good a time with the inside world. These dissenters were forever demanding the abolition of compulsory chapel, of required courses, of compulsory everything. And, above all, the students should be given more outside life. It was an outrage that men should not visit the college whenever they pleased, that the girls should not have an unlimited number of weekends. They stoutly upheld the theory of co-education where young men and women mingled daily in earnest work. In fact, they held to the Utopian belief that when young men and women mingled daily they would do nothing but work. College was so unnatural, they insisted.
So much for undergraduate life as it used to be. It was far from perfect. There was no doubt a tinge of the blue stocking about us. We were certainly unsophisticated; we should now be thought incredibly childish. It was an unnatural existence if a fondness for intellectual adventure, a capacity for enjoying oneself without the aid of the opposite sex is unnatural. I, for one, do not regret it. There are so many perfectly natural things that are not entirely praiseworthy, why shouldn't a few unnatural ones have some merit? After all, a system that produces independent, serious-minded women who will take responsibility and stand on their own feet, who are not wholly dependent on conventional amusements for their pleasures, cannot be laughed off.
Not long ago I went back to college for a visit. I knew a few undergraduates, and I looked forward with considerable pleasure to mingling in a world that was familiar to me in retrospect - a world of ideals and illusions.
I thought the campus much more beautiful than I had remembered it. And so it is. In thirteen years several new buildings of imposing appearance have improved the looks of things, and the donors have erected them in loving memory combined with better taste than that which marked an earlier period. The older ones couldn't very well be pulled down, but careful planting has done wonders in concealing them.
There weren't many girls in sight. As I had remembered it, the campus was always full of girls, crowds of untidy gangling young creatures. Instead, there seemed to be only a few young women, and these were very smart, very soignee, attended by young men, rather in the manner of people strolling in a park. Motor cars were clustered at each building.
"Where's everybody?" I asked at teatime.
"It's Saturday," explained my hostess, a little surprised. "They're all away, except the ones who have men up."
"But how many week-ends are you allowed?" I asked, somewhat astonished.
"Five a semester with two leaves of a day each. But if you're smart you can wangle more," I was told; and one girl added complacently, "I'm going to be away every one this term."
Somewhat confused, I settled into my cushions to wait until my alien presence had been assimilated and normal conversation should be resumed. Not that the girls were shy. There was plenty of talk. There were reminiscences of the past weekend spent at Princeton, New Haven, or New York; there were plans for the coming one which was to be spent at New Haven, New York, or Princeton; there was an outburst against a certain mother who was just plain dumb not to know that evening clothes have to touch the ground all the way around. But there was no talk of college life, of studies, or hockey or rehearsals or meetings or even college gossip. Except for one expression of languid curiosity as to the punishment of two girls who were caught motoring after ten o'clock at night with some men, the conversation might have taken place at Sherry's.
All of these girls were intelligent, their conversation was amusing and entertaining. They were pretty and attractive. They were obviously enjoying being alive. They were flourishing happily under a system that was different from the one I had known.
I protest that I did not feel the resentment supposed to be common to the old graduate who comes back to college and finds things changed. I was distinctly surprised, however, and filled with curiosity. I was eager to know why these girls were talking about Princeton instead of Samarkand.
They appeared, for their part, to have some curiosity about the interesting old customs in the college of long-vanished days. One girl asked me, "Is it really true that when you were here you had to take Math and Latin .Freshman year?" She spoke in the manner of one who inquires into the habits of the early Britons. I admitted that it was indeed so.
"Oh, how awful!" they chorused. I added that chapel was compulsory at that remote date, that we had to take either Physics or Chemistry, and threw in for good measure the appalling item that there was only one dance a year to which men could come.
That was too dreadful. The conditions of the Congo rubber plantations under the sinister Leopold were gay in comparison. Cries of pity and horror arose. "But, whatever did you do? they exclaimed.
I mentioned a few of the occupations with which we had beguiled the time. They listened to my ingenuous recital as your mother's friends used to receive your account of the fun you had at the Sunday School picnic.
Thinking that possibly all this worldliness had been assumed for the benefit of an outsider, and an elderly one at that, I asked my friends later what the girls talked about when there were no strangers around. They looked at one another and burst into shouts of laughter.
"Men!" they cried in one breath.
"What do they say about them?" I asked. That brought on more giggles. Honestly! Of all the absurd questions!
"Oh, technic and things like that - or else the men they're crazy about," was all I could get out of them.
"Don't they ever talk about what they're going to do after college?" I asked, remembering our endless discussions.
"Everybody expects to get married," was the candid reply. "Lots of girls think it's a disgrace not to be engaged by the end of Sophomore year."
I discovered later that most of the girls expect to go to work, if only for a time; but now that jobs for women are taken for granted, they have not the importance they had even ten years ago. Then it was still something of an effort for many girls to take a job. Parents had to be persuaded, friends of the family had to be pacified, if possible, employers had still to be convinced.
"But what about college affairs," I persisted, "nonacademic activities - they still go on, don't they - dramatics and athletics, and student government and magazines - who goes in for them?"
"Yes, they still go on," they replied without enthusiasm. "The girls who go in for them are the ones that don't go away week-ends." And there was in their tone a note of dismissal.
There are girls now in colleges who busy themselves without the aid of men, who are more interested in the events of the week than in the weekends. There are many who dream of distinguished careers after college. I am simply reporting a phenomenon that did not exist when I was in college - a phenomenon that is sufficiently widespread to be recognized. I am reporting evidence that I saw and heard, that I collected from observing and talking to a number of girls and teachers. And the subsequent conversations that I have had with people who are directly connected with undergraduate life in other colleges have produced only confirmation of these impressions. It is easy to say, "Oh, but you saw only one side. The same thing went on when you were in college and you didn't know anything about it." My point is that I most certainly should have known about it if it had existed then in the same proportion that it now exists, for, disregarding the numbers of these girls, the fact remains that they are the ones who set the fashions for undergraduate life. The celebrity - the girl who is active in college affairs - is no longer the fashionable figure she once was. The fashionable girl now is one who lives in a flood of telegrams, long-distance telephone calls, letters - preferably special delivery - and visitors.
Not that these girls embody a Victorian ideal in spite of their long skirts. Nor do they cleave to the earlier belief that love is woman's whole existence. Love has very little to do with it. They are not looking for a strong arm to lean upon or a noble man to cherish and serve. They are after men for what they can get out of them, which seems to mean a certain amount of excitement politely called " good times" and the acclaim of their fellow students.
The more I saw of them, the more I was struck by their tenacity of purpose, their single-mindedness, their extraordinary efficiency. I realized how ruthlessly they have stamped out any qualities in their own characters that might interfere with the scheme of life they have adopted, and with what relentless precision they have organized their college life to one end. This concentration is particularly interesting in contrast to the diffuse unorganized course that we pursued. We were forever casting about in new directions; they are steadfastly true to one.
By a curious paradox, the weekend seems to be the focal point about which college life revolves for these girls. Everything - friendships, amusements, sports, studies - is organized with that end in view. Social life consists of small groups. Six is the correct number. The girls in one's crowd must be girls with whom one wants to go away on weekends, girls who will fit in with the men one knows. One of the instructors told me of a foreign student who entered college Junior year after a distinguished record in a European University. In the dormitory in which she roomed no member of her class bothered to speak to her. They had no interest in her experiences, no curiosity about her point of view. She was not week-end material.
The same practical attitude applies to sports. There is great interest in golf, tennis, riding - the sports that are useful after college, and during week-ends. Basket ball and hockey may be fun, but there is no particular demand at Southampton for a girl who can shoot a basket from the center of the field. So, why bother with basket ball and hockey? Why even bother to look at them? The time might be much better spent improving one's bridge game. Hockey and basket ball still are played, but the eager crowds of cheering onlookers have dwindled considerably. Skating and skiing may come in useful after college, so it is well to practice them, but do not waste time on the childish sport of sliding down hill on a tin tray. It may be fun but it doesn't get you anywhere.
These girls study, and they study hard. They take their courses seriously. It is doubtful if they take them adventurously. One instructor told me, beaming with satisfaction, that the standard of scholarship was higher than ever. The girls said, "You have to get good marks or you lose your weekends." They spend more time on studies - from Monday to Friday - than we did. Besides the powerful incentive of keeping one's privileges, they have fewer distractions in the form of extra-curricular business. They approach their courses with the same cool efficiency with which they form their friendships and choose their sports. It is more sensible to select courses in which you can learn the subject by rote than to venture into more hazardous fields that demand original thought. In the latter, you never know just where you stand, whereas in the former, by working you can be assured of good marks. I even heard teachers classified as those who gave A's and those who did not. Certain instructors because of their personalities always arouse enthusiasm among their students. That is true now, but there seems to be no interest in members of the faculty beyond those under whom the girls are actually studying. What's the use of knowing teachers if you don't work with them? It was thought very peculiar that I wanted to see several instructors for whom I had a lively friendship although I had never been in their class rooms. There is no more interest in the faculty as people than in the foreign student.
I asked what these girls came to college for. "Oh, it's a good place," they said cheerfully. "You meet a lot of nice people. Besides, you have to do something." That, I take it, means that you might do much worse than putting in the time until you are married in the company of congenial companions who widen your circle suitably and profitably, not to mention the great advantage of getting to know more men than the home town affords. It is not a glamorous point of view, but it has much to recommend it, practically speaking. For it is a very definite preparation for the life after college that these girls have elected.
It is a truism to define education as a preparation for life. Moreover, it will be a long time before the relative merits of present-day undergraduate life and that of ten or fifteen years ago can be accurately weighed. However, there may be something to be deduced from a comparison of the two products at the time of their graduation. What equipment has one that the other lacks? Wherein is each one the stronger? On which would you place the odds for future happiness?
These girls who are graduating today have a clear-cut notion of the kind of life they want. Each one of them has a sound working knowledge of social life of a precise kind, a careful technic for dealing with most men, a good training in the accepted amusements of her kind - tennis, golf, bridge - and a choice circle of carefully selected friends. She has a mind that is well trained, that can concentrate, select, and reject, and is not cluttered with hazy, ardent convictions about the rights and responsibilities of women and what art is. She will avoid the bitterness of disillusion because she has forsworn illusion. She is prepared to take the world as it is and make the best of it according to her requirements. She is determined to find for herself a comfortable, secure place and dig in. So far, everything appears to be in her favor. She has turned every moment of her undergraduate days into practical account for the next step.
That is, I suppose, the main difference between her equipment at graduation and that of her sister of thirteen years ago. When my contemporaries graduated, their education had no immediate application to the next step. Many people thought the whole business a supreme waste of time. First of all, college was dangerously likely to unsettle girls for home life. You had to expect that. It was all very well for girls who were going to teach to march out into the world armed with an A.B. A college degree was necessary for a job. But as for business (and the idea of women in business was still felt to be somewhat far fetched!) well, a diploma from a good business school was a more reasonable entering wedge.
Moreover, when we actually went to work - as most of us did - we had ahead of us bitter surprises. Our college esprit de corps was so genuine that we were not prepared to face the self-seeking people who get ahead at the expense of someone else. (Not that these people are confined to the world of business.) College was a democratic spot. There the girls had made their own places without regard to their spending money, their clothes, or their parents' addresses. The absence of world standards of wealth and position simply meant that we had a great deal to learn after June of Senior year. Our lack of knowledge of men did not argue a brilliant social career. We knew nothing of the technic of the small, fierce battles among women where men are involved.
Our notion of the world was naive in the extreme. We vaguely expected a larger college where the opportunities would be vaster, the adventures more thrilling, the contests keener - a larger arena, in fact, with more hazards but fair play.
We were certainly not prepared to fit into place. Our greatest strength lay in our ignoring the necessity of fitting into place. Moreover, we had an idea that our duty was not to accept things as they are but to improve upon them. Admitting that we had little practical equipment, I believe that we had something more valuable. We had courage, eagerness, and self-reliance. Our carping critics could - and did - attribute the first two qualities to ignorance and the third to self-satisfaction. Perhaps they were right. I cannot see that it is important. It is quite true that we received bad knocks, worse ones possibly than the young women who are graduating now will have. The knowledge that life does not always conduct itself according to one's notions of fair play is dearly bought, but I do not think that our equipment for living was so fragile that we crumbled under it, and I believe that our system contained a better preparation for enjoying life than does the present one.
It is quite possible that the girls to-day know more about life - certain aspects of it - than we did. But those aspects one cannot help learning. The simple process of growing up teaches it. The important thing is what you are going to do with it. And that is where the priceless value of our four cloistered years comes in.
The girls now in college who find enjoyment in association with men are following the most natural course. Prohibited as we were from these normal pleasures of adolescence, we turned to other enjoyments - the enjoyments of educated people. There is no need to describe the difference between the pleasures of the educated and those of the untutored. Everybody knows what it is. In spite of the cult of lowbrowism, we all recognize that reading, listening to music, contemplating pictures, not to mention a more active participation in the arts, have a necessary part in the lives of most people of consequence. Nor do I have to define what I mean by consequence.
The odd thing is that when girls begin to think seriously about men they automatically stop thinking about these subtler pleasures unless they have already formed the habit of enjoying intellectual pursuits. The kind of fun that we had at the Latin party is at once pathetic and embarrassing to girls whose only idea of a good time is a night club. At college now a play produced by the girls is important as an event when you have men up.
When I was there visiting, my polite hostess took me to a concert. It was given by a string quartet that played beautifully. Afterwards we stopped in a girl's room where we discovered a small group lying about on cushions. As we entered the room one girl fetched a great sigh. "I'm simply gaga," she moaned. "He's so sweet." Then she added triumphantly, "I got my telephone call. The one I'd been waiting for all day." There was some talk about the concert and of the beauty of Brahms. The lovesick one turned to me and said point blank, "Honestly, which do you think is more exciting - listening to a telephone call from a man you're crazy about or listening to Brahms?"
Of course she had me there. For excitement, the telephone call wins hands down. There's no argument about that. The only trouble is that once your ears are attuned to telephone calls they do not hear Brahms. The telephone calls, moreover, will come of themselves, but you have to concentrate to catch the vibrations of music. Moreover, the minutiae of living so clouds the issue as you get older that you seldom turn to music later on.
I am not so silly as to advocate carrying into later years the kind of life we liked so well at college. I do not advise a replica of Philemon and Baucis's little party when one's husband's business friends come to dinner, nor the suggestion of a jolly hour of folk-dancing when things are slow on the house party. There is nothing more deplorable than the woman who doesn't get over college ways when college is over. But that is not the fault of college. Those women would have the same trouble in any circumstances.
It seems to me that the law of diminishing returns is at work on this new system. I doubt if it is, after all, more practical than the old one. Wherein lies its superiority - what does it offer that the old one lacked? The old one was criticized as being so unlike the outside world that the adjustment to the latter was bound to be a task of huge proportions. Looking about me, I cannot see any wrecked lives as a consequence of this ordeal. The adjustment was a hurdle that most of my contemporaries took in their stride pretty successfully.
The lack of specific social training that the class of 1915 has had to struggle along with does not appear to have been an overpowering handicap to the enjoyment of human society. Perhaps the members of that class do not play bridge or tennis as well as the graduates of this year, but they have one great advantage. The old system, after all, trained women to regard other people as individuals. And that, when you stop to think, gives one the edge on a person who regards women as natural enemies and men as natural prey.
At any rate, college life as I knew it did not act as a deterrent to matrimony. The proportion of my college friends who withered on the parent stem is somewhat less than it is among those who did not go to college. My classmates received rather more than the usual allotment of attention from men as soon as they left college.
There is one great drawback to association with men as measured in terms of excitement. It definitely precludes the pleasures of companionship - pleasures that last throughout one's life. Flirtation is one of the worst possible foundations for friendship. Moreover, there is a kind of behavior that is piquant at eighteen, permissible in the early twenties, but acutely tiresome in the thirties, and after that - well, isn't it kinder not even to consider that?
Carrying the argument still farther into the field of the practical - what do men think about the new system? Do they invariably prefer the women who are concentrating hard on them? I am inclined to believe that the perverse creatures get a little bored, that the best of them, the ones who are worth bothering about, are more interested in the women who think that life holds more than being popular with men. As a matter of cold-blooded technic, it is not a bad idea occasionally to be busy listening to Brahms instead of waiting for the telephone.