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by Neil Berkowitz
Viewing our own past is somewhat akin to witnessing an exhumation. The comfort we find in our generic expectations gives way to random, ineradicable details. For a moment, at least, we see the familiar present—and ourselves—in each of these troubling and persistent details.
In the first decades of the past century, general education sections were restricted by gender. Not only were additional undergraduate classes segregated by gender but other courses were offered only to one gender or the other. Pity the man who wanted to study the Romantic (“Georgian”) or Victorian poets or the woman with interest in the rest of nineteenth-century English literature. Poetry was for women, literature for men. A separate section for women was added to the Victorian Essayists course in 1913, but Nineteenth Century Literature remained open to men only. (On the other hand, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford and George Eliot’s Silas Marner were two of the nine works in the novels portion of the graduation exam reading lists for 1909-11.) Comparative Literature, too, was off limits to women.
The 1920 faculty evaluations offer with great efficiency and clarity one of those details pertaining to gender differences in faculty personnel matters. The evaluation of a male Assistant Professor describes him as the department’s “most virile teacher” and praises his superior leadership ability. While women could also be noted for their leadership and recommended for promotion, the criteria shifted or broadened for women. A female Instructor’s evaluation notes that she “reflects her fine breeding in all of her contacts.”
Off to the Faculty Club for lunch? Until a generation ago there were separate clubs for men and for women. And though they shared the same building from late in the 1920s, they had separate lounges. The dining hall was shared—but women entered and exited from a separate side entrance.
Graduate enrollments tell a complex story about opportunity
for women. Through the first two decades of the 20th century there were roughly
equal numbers
of male and female graduate students, with more women than men in a number
of years. But men far outnumbered women in the doctoral program.
