Women, Love and Learning Conflicting Expectations
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
This book tells the story of a generation of American and Australian women who Mackinnon Alison embodied – and challenged – the prescriptions of their times. In the 1950s and early 60s they went to colleges and universities, trained for professions and developed a life of the mind. They were also urged to embrace their femininity, to marry young, to devote themselves to husbands, children and communities. Could they do both? While they might be seen as a privileged group, they led the way for a multitude in the years ahead. They were quietly making the revolution that was to come. Did they have ‘the best of all possible worlds’? Or were they caught in a double bind? Sylvia Plath’s letters tell of her delighted sense of life opening before her as a ‘college girl’. Her poetry, however, tells of anguish, of reaching for distant goals. Drawing on interviews, surveys, reunion books, letters, biographical and autobiographical writing from both American and Australian women, this cultural history argues that the choices that faced educated women in that time led to the revolution of the late 1960s and 70s. Something had to give. There are lessons here for today’s young women, facing again Learning and Love Women, conflicting expectations. Is it possible, they ask, to ‘have it all’? “This book asks insightful and provocative questions about women who came of age in the 1950s in Australia and the US. Its exploration of the impact of higher education on 1950s women students in both countries highlights critical differences in awareness of women‘s issues in the so-called conformist decade”. Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain Alison Mackinnon is Professor Emerita at the University of South Australia and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Her extensive publications on women, education, and the changing life course include the prize winning Love and Freedom: Professional women and the reshaping of personal life (1997). She has held fellowships at Rutgers University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Newnham Alison Mackinnon College Cambridge, Umeå University, and the Australian National University. Peter Lang Peter Women, Love ISBN 978-3-0343-0450-4 and Learning www.peterlang.com The Double Bind Peter Lang Peter A This book tells the story of a generation of American and Australian women who lis embodied – and challenged – the prescriptions of their times. In the 1950s and early 60s they went to colleges and universities, trained for professions and developed a life o of the mind. They were also urged to embrace their femininity, to marry young, to n devote themselves to husbands, children and communities. Could they do both? While they might be seen as a privileged group, they led the way for a multitude in the years M ahead. They were quietly making the revolution that was to come. a c Did they have ‘the best of all possible worlds’? Or were they caught in a double bind? k Sylvia Plath’s letters tell of her delighted sense of life opening before her as a ‘college in girl’. Her poetry, however, tells of anguish, of reaching for distant goals. Drawing on n interviews, surveys, reunion books, letters, biographical and autobiographical writing o from both American and Australian women, this cultural history argues that the choices n that faced educated women in that time led to the revolution of the late 1960s and 70s. Something had to give. There are lessons here for today’s young women, facing again Women, conflicting expectations. Is it possible, they ask, to ‘have it all’? “This book asks insightful and provocative questions about women who came of age in the 1950s in Australia and the US. Its exploration of the impact of higher education on 1950s women students in both countries highlights critical dierences in awareness L of women‘s issues in the so-called conformist decade”. ove Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain an d Learnin Alison Mackinnon is Professor Emerita at the University of South Australia and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Her extensive publications on women, education, and the changing life course include the prize winning Love and g Freedom: Professional women and the reshaping of personal life (1997). She has held fellowships at Rutgers University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Newnham Alison Mackinnon College Cambridge, Umeå University, and the Australian National University. P e te r L Women, Love a n g g n a L and Learning er The Double Bind t www.peterlang.com e P Women, Love and Learning Alison Mackinnon Women, Love and Learning The Double Bind PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mackinnon, Alison, 1942- Women, love, and learning : the double bind / Alison Mackinnon. – 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-0343-0450-4 1. Women–United States–History–20th century. 2. Women–Australia–History–20th century. 3. Feminism–United States–History–20th century. 4. Feminism–Australia–History– 20th century. 5. Women–Social conditions–History–20th century. I. Title. HQ1426.M33 2010 305.40973–dc22 2010024640 ISBN 978-3-0343-0450-4 (Print) ISBN 978-3-0351-0113-3 (EPDF) ISBN 978-3-0343-3899-8 (EPUB) ISBN 978-3-0343-3900-1 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/978-3-0351-0113-3 Open Access: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © Alison Mackinnon 2010 Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net Janus could be called her god, as she spends most of her college years looking in two directions. Dean Nancy Lewis ‘College women and their proper spheres’, Journal of the American Association of University Women, 47(4), 1954, p. 210. Cover image Charles Blackman born Australia 1928, lived in England 1961–66 Janus face Alice with teapot crown 1956 tempera and oil on composition board, 106.5 x 121.8 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the NGV Foundation by Barbara Blackman, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2005 © Charles Blackman/Licensed by Viscopy, 2010 Contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................. 9 Introduction ........................................................................................ 13 1 Who was she? Surveying the educated woman: posture photos, beauty queens, dormitory rules and achievement motivation .......................................................... 29 2 Conservative times: Cold War, hot sex and the consumer revolution............................ 65 3 The experience: peer culture or academics? ................................ 105 4 Life after college: a problematic realm ........................................ 143 5 From Mademoiselle to Ms magazine: mainstreamers, continuity and premature liberationists .............. 181 Conclusion: It’s deja vu all over again? ........................................... 213 A note on sources and method .......................................................... 229 Bibliography ..................................................................................... 235 Index ................................................................................................. 251 Acknowledgements There are so many who have helped bring this book into the world. Research assistants Kate Leeson and Penny Gregory at the Hawke Research Institute made important contributions to the research at dif- ferent times. Kate Leeson (again!) and Rosemary Luke have both pro- vided excellent editorial help. I have enjoyed and profited from dis- cussions with colleagues Linda Eisenmann, Kathleen Wieler, Pat Gra- ham, Alison Prentice, Geraldine Clifford, Marjorie Theobald, the late Fay Gale, and Judy Gill to name a few. Others such as Sherry Ortner, Harvey Graff, Ravenna Helson, Elizabeth Boyd and Dan Horowitz have been prepared to enlighten me on particular aspects of time and place. Barrie Thorne (University of California, Berkeley) offered sis- terly hospitality at Berkeley. Part of the research and writing was carried out while I was a vis- iting fellow with the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, in 2006. During that time I greatly valued dis- cussions with other fellows and seminar participants in a very genera- tive setting. The University of South Australia generously granted me study leave to visit archives and libraries in the USA. In 1994 an Aus- tralian Research Council small grant funded the initial survey that be- gan this study. An Australian Research Council Discovery grant (2002–2004) facilitated further research and the travel both within and beyond Australia that made the book possible. Smith College also provided a Margaret Grierson ‘Travel to Collections’ grant which funded a productive visit to the Smith campus in Northampton. I have enjoyed sharing my research journey with the many help- ful archivists I’ve encountered along the way. They are the guardians