:Southern Women at the Seven Sister Colleges: Feminist Values and Social Activism, 1875–1915

Abstract

Joan Marie Johnson presents a “collective biography” (p. 2) of unique Reconstruction-era collegians: southern white women who attended northern, single-sex “Seven Sister” colleges. Johnson ably mines school records, surveys, obituaries, diaries, personal letters, and autobiographies of over 1,000 “pioneers” (p. 9). The era of interest lies between 1875, when Smith College and Wellesley College were founded, to the World War I era, when higher education in the United States underwent drastic structural changes. The mix of gender expectations, regional allegiance, and campus climate makes for a lively but nuanced tale of complex identity formation. The women's stories reveal intricacies of (northern) higher education's clash of values with (southern) home training. Chapters are arranged to follow the women's stories from their upbringing in the South, through the college experience, and then after graduation when most returned to the South. Chapter one, “The Benefits of a Liberal Arts Education,” situates the students in their home environment, and chapter two, “Entrance Requirements, Preparatory Departments and Schools, and Alumnae Networks,” locates pipelines of college preparatory schools and feeder clubs. Although the girls are painted as privileged “belles,” Johnson argues that those who chose to go north for college were a self-selected set of radical-minded women who sought social adventure, superior mental development, and broadened personal freedoms not available at their local or state institutions.