Elinor’s College Career

By

Julia A. Schwartz

IN FOUR PARTS

I. THE FRESHMAN YEAR

1. The Two Little Girls who Laughed
2. Red Ink
3. Green Caps and Gowns
4. A Mysterious Disappearance
5. Being a Genius
6. The Fatal Black Bag

1. The Two Little Girls who Laughed
2. Red Ink
3. Green Caps and Gowns
4. A Mysterious Disappearance
5. Being a Genius
6. The Fatal Black Bag

II. THE SOPHOMORE YEAR

7. Myra’s Little Ram
8. Knowing It All
9. The Jealous Fates
10. Valentines
11. The Mellowing of Lydia

III. THE JUNIOR YEAR

13. Room for Contemporaries
14. All Kinds of Sense
15. A Screw Loose
16. A Day of Events
17. Cela M’est Égal
18. Three Dummy Idiots

IV. THE SENIOR YEAR

19. Setting an Example
20. Elinor Takes Her Medicine
21. The Woes of Eminence
22. Blessed A Plenty
23. A Pretty Good Place
24. Benefits Remembered

ILLUSTRATED BY
ELLEN WETHERAL AHRENS

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1906

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Elinor arrives at Vassar College, one of America’s earliest secular colleges. Elinor’s college career takes place in the late 1890s, at a time when women’s higher education is still something of a curiosity. No one knows quite what to make of women who want higher education, and Elinor is seemingly at a loss as well: she has enrolled only because her mother, a first-generation graduate, has pressured her to do so. With time, Elinor comes to appreciate the slightly odd characters around her, and of course, the rarefied social environment that Vassar offered at the time.

Elinor arrives at Vassar College, one of America’s earliest secular colleges. Elinor’s college career takes place in the late 1890s, at a time when women’s higher education is still something of a curiosity. No one knows quite what to make of women who want higher education, and Elinor is seemingly at a loss as well: she has enrolled only because her mother, a first-generation graduate, has pressured her to do so. With time, Elinor comes to appreciate the slightly odd characters around her, and of course, the rarefied social environment that Vassar offered at the time.

From Vassar’s graduates would come many of America’s prominent female intellectuals and activists. The authoress, Julia Schwartz, unfortunately does not propel herself into those ranks with this book, but it does offer a curated view of the challenges, joys, and frustrations of a 19th century women’s college student, by someone who was there to experience them.

This book appears in several smashing reading lists because the author was a graduate of Vassar College, writing about smashing at Vassar College. The historical context of the book (turn of the 20^th century) is a time when smashing was increasingly considered, both inside and outside of women’s colleges, as inappropriate, if not an outright mental disorder. The book must therefore be seen as counter-propaganda. All traces of homosexuality have been carefully omitted from the text,¹ even though there is ample historical evidence that a minority of cases had to do with it. Instead, the reader is left to ponder a culture of platonic idolization, which, history suggests, also took place.

1. At age 46, Julia Schwartz described herself to the Vassar College Alumnae office as “a daughter, sister, aunt, neighbor, friend, voter, [and] citizen.” Everything but a wife and mother.