Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Ulrich, Laurel, ed. 2004. Yards and gates: gender in Harvard and Radcliffe history. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4662764 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History Edited by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich i Contents Preface………………………………………………………………………………........………ix List of Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………......xi Introduction: “Rewriting Harvard’s History” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich..…………………….…………………………………….................1 1. BEFORE RADCLIFFE, 1760-1860 Creating a Fellowship of Educated Men Forming Gentlemen at Pre-Revolutionary Harvard……………………………………17 Conrad Edick Wright Harvard Once Removed The “Favorable Situation” of Hannah Winthrop and Mercy Otis Warren…………………. 39 Frances Herman Lord The Poet and the Petitioner Two Black Women in Harvard’s Early History…………………………………………53 Margot Minardi Snapshots: From the Archives Anna Quincy Describes the “Cambridge Worthies” Beverly Wilson Palmer ………………………………....................................................69 “Feminine” Clothing at Harvard in the 1830s Robin McElheny…………………………………………………………………….…75 VI CONTENTS John Langdon Sibley On Taming Undergraduate Passions …………………………………………….………79 Brian Sullivan II. CREATING RADCLIFFE, DEFINING GENDER, 1870-1910 Taking Up the Challenge The Origins of Radcliffe………………………………………....…………………………..87 Sally Schwager Harvard Men From Dudes to Rough Riders…………………………………………………….………….17 Kristin Hoganson The Great Debate Charles W. Eliot and M. Carey Thomas………………………………………..............129 Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz Radcliffe Women at Play Gloria Bruce……………………………………………………………………………….…139 “Clothes Make the Man” Cross-Dressing on the Radcliffe Stage…………………………………………………..…147 Karen Lepri III. VARITIES OF INEQUALITY, 1900-2001 Fair Harvard? Labor, Law, and Gender in the Harvard Scrubwoman Case…………………………...159 Linzy Brekke Negotiating Work and Family Aspirations of Early Radcliffe Graduates ……………………………………...............173 Jo Anne Preston CONTENTS VII Snapshots: Women Working at Harvard Harvard’s Invisible Faculty Four Portraits…………………………………………...………….…………………187 Jane Knowles Women with High Influence, Low Visibility Phyllis Keller………………………………..……………………………………..……..191 Feminist Labor Organizing Images from the HUCTW Campaigns…………………………..……………...............193 The Changing “Harvard Student” Ethnicity, Race, and Gender ……………………………………………………….............195 Marcia G. Synnott V. COEDUCATION BY DEGREES, 1943-2001 Feminism and Femininity in Almost Equal Balance Andrew K. Mandel………………….…………………………………………………...........215 Snapshots: Midcentury Memories Memories of a Life at Radcliffe Ruth Hubbard……………….……………………………………………………….229 Nostalgia and Promise Ann Karnovsky…….........……………..…………….……………………………………….233 10,000 Men of Harvard Eva S. Moseley………………………………...……………………………………...239 Integrating Women at Oxford and Harvard, 1964- 1977 Marie Hicks………………………………………………….………..………………….245 From Sympathizers to Organizers Jennifer J. Stetzer…………………………………………………………….…………271 VIII CONTENTS Snapshots: Memories of Change Integrating Lamont………………………………………………………....…………………285 The Lost Generation Linda Greenhouse……………………………………………………………………..….289 Remembering Radcliffe Katherine Park……………………………………………………………………...……293 Founding the Committee for Women’s Studies………………………………………..……299 A Radcliffe Girl at Harvard or Why Members of the Class of 1958 Staged a Revolution in 1993……………………..303 Ann R. Shapiro Ups and Downs with Harvard Affection, Justice, and Reciprocity in the University Community……..…………………..311 Helen Vendler Mingling Promiscuously A History of Women and Men at Harvard……………………………….…………………317 Drew Faust Notes on Contributors …………………………………………………………………………329 Index……………………………………………………………………………………………331 1 Preface In the fall of 1997, Harvard College dedicated a new gate on the north side of the fenced- in “yard” that marks the oldest part of the university. On one side they mounted a plaque commemorating the moment, twenty-five years before, when female students began living in the freshmen dormitories in the Yard. On the other side of the new gate they attached a sentence from the autobiography of the seventeenth-century Puritan poet, Ann Bradstreet: “My heart rose up when I beheld a new country with new manners.” By planting Bradstreet’s words on one side of the gate and the 1972 anniversary on the other, the College symbolically linked centuries of female achievement with a presumed landmark in Harvard’s history. But in beginning women’s history at Harvard in 1972, they also obliterated the history of Radcliffe, its ostensible sister college. That fact was not lost on the Radcliffe alumnae who bitterly objected to the supposed “Twenty- Fifth Anniversary of Coresidency.” In their view the new gate fortified old fences. The argument over the Bradstreet gate was one of several public controversies over relations between Harvard and Radcliffe in the years before the final merger of the two institutions. This anthology grew out of a joint effort by Harvard’s Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History and Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library for Women’s History to elevate historical discourse during that troubled period. Together, the Warren Center and the Schlesinger sponsored summer grants for senior thesis writers, organized two well-attended conferences on gender in Harvard and Radcliffe history, and supported the creation of a “women’s history” tour of Harvard and Radcliffe yards. This anthology is a final step in our collaboration. 1 2 Like the conferences that preceded it, this book brings together scholarly essays, “snapshots” from the archives, and memoirs. It includes work by professional historians and by the gifted undergraduates who were recipients of Warren Center-Pforzheimer grants for summer research. We began this project in the hope that serious history might improve communication within the Harvard-Radcliffe community, but our larger objective was to demonstrate new ways of writing history. Although I am responsible for the final editing of the book, many others contributed to its completion. Mary Dunn, then director of the Schlesinger Library, helped launch the larger project. Jane Knowles, Radcliffe archivist and later acting director of the Schlesinger, was co-conspirator from the beginning. Susan Hunt, then administrator of the Charles Warren Center, and Sylvia McDowell of the Schlesinger Library, offered wonderful support in the early stages. Later, Elizabeth Nichols gathered and edited essays. Odette Binder assumed the many administrative tasks necessary to a project of this scope, and also compiled the index. Patricia Denault, associate director of the Charles Warren Center, skillfully accomplished the final editing. I am grateful to Helen Horowitz and Ruth Feldstein for reviewing an early version of the manuscript, to the many Harvard and Radcliffe alumni/ae students, faculty, and staff who shared their stories, insights, and frustrations. Most of all, I thank the authors who generously contributed their time and energy to this volume. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Cambridge, Massachusetts 2 3 August 2003 3 3 List of Illustrations 1. Frontispiece: The Gate of Opportunity……………………………………………………………1 2. Women staff at the Observatory………………………………………………………………….. 4 3. Scrubwomen outside Widener Library……………………………………………………………8 4. Harvard “toga”…………………………………………………………………………………...76 5. Radcliffe women playing basketball……………………………………………………………143 6. Alice Heustis Wilbur……………………………………………………………………………151 7. Harvard Student Socialists pamphlet cover…………………..………………………...………166 8. Harvard scrubwomen line art……………………………………………………...……………168 9. Susanne Knauth Langer………………………………………………………………….......…188 10. Mary Peters Fieser………………………………………………………………….....………..189 11. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin………………………………………………………...……………190 12. Helen Maud Cam……………………………………………………………………....……….190 13. HUCTW rally, interior…………………………………………………………….……………193 14. HUCTW bake sale…………………………………………………………...…………………194 15. HUCTW family rally for day care……………………………………………….……………..194 16. Tea in a Radcliffe dorm………………………………………………………………..……….218 17. Harvard Strike: The Bust………………………………………………….……………………274 18. Harvard Strike: Woman protester………………………………………………………………277 19. Harvard Strike; women confront John Harvard………………………………………………...278 20. Integrating Lamont: Men …………………………………………………………………..…..285 21. Integrating Lamont: Women at front desk.……………………………….……………………286 22. Integrating Lamont: “Together at Last”…………………………………………………….….288 23. Women’s Studies Poster………………………………………………………………………..299 4 Introduction: Rewriting Harvard’s History Laurel Thatcher Ulrich In the opening pages of A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf imagines her fictional self walking across the grass at a college she calls Oxbridge when a stern beadle in a cutaway coat intercepts her. His outraged face reminds her that only the fellows and scholars are allowed on the grass. A few minutes later, inspired by her reverie on a passage from Milton, she ascends the steps to the library. “Instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with