Merger Without Manners

Diana Trilling '25 came to Cambridge to view first-hand the effects of co-residency. With her husband Lionel she moved into Briggs Hall in the spring of 1971. Three essays on the visit appear in the collection, We Must March My Darlings, published in 1977. Mrs. Trilling discussed her visit in a recent interview.

If Diana Trilling had her way, we would all behave like ladies and gentlemen. Rehearsals and practices would end at the dinner hour. We would eat together, make polite conversation, and retire for coffee in the common room.

Trilling believes in the old rules: the manner and social graces that went out with parietals and dress codes. When Harvard men moved to the Quad, students forgot the rules. The word manners became a buzzword for "elitist" and style was for snobs. The result? Loneliness.

Trilling had hoped to find warm friendships when she came to the Quad in '71. Instead she found men and women more isolated than ever before. They may have been brushing their teeth side by side, but they were good and lonely all the same.

A peculiar sense of arrogance accompanied their isolation. Trilling found students self-possessed, "feeling that the hand of God touched them because they were at Harvard." In 1921 you chose Radcliffe from a telephone book. It did not choose you. Students seemed a curious mixture of selfishness and insecurity, aware of their privilege but without self-confidence or faith in their abilities.

This mixture puzzled Trilling, because she sensed something special in the first Radcliffe men. They seemed a sensitive group; men who preferred milk and cookies to the happy hour scene. They respected Radcliffe brains but "were by and large men who felt inadequate with competition, who felt women would be more tender."

Currier House became Trilling's symbol for what she disliked at the Quad. She and her husband turned down the Currier apartment offered for their visit. The house which opened that fall reflected "a combination of luxury and mess." She was "appalled at the surplus...the entertainment rooms stocked down to the last wine glass." How could students hold parties in such luxury and still spill yogurt on the dining room floor? Where were their manners?

In her day, students knew how to behave. The 54 women of Briggs Hall dined together at specific hours, recited grace before meals, and were served by maids in uniform. Although North House could not be called a sorority, Trilling says, "we knew everyone. Everyone, in the very least, was interesting. We all had something to say to one another. And no one was lonely outside of the usual adolescent schmerz."

One wonders whether the schmerz includes repressed sexual feelings. "The chocolate fudge sundaes we put away when we should have had sex!" Trilling says, adding "But I do not think it hurt us to wait, either." Trilling is not a prude. The sexual revolution did not upset her sense of propriety, but was nevertheless cause for concern. Sexual relationships did not relieve the students' loneliness.

Trilling, who originally thought general student arrogance hurt relationships, recently revised her view. "At the time I did not give students full credit for seriousness, for practicality in their relationships. A generational reaction," she added smiling.

Radcliffe bears some responsibility for the changes in students. Like its students, Radcliffe lost humility--"the modesty and pride it had as a mistreated minority changed to arrogance." Why did the Radcliffe administration insist that the merger culminated 90 years of women's education? "If the administration had said 'we have got to meet economic pressure' I would not have one bit of criticism."

And so the topic returns to style. If economic necessity brought on the merger, it did not give Radcliffe an excuse for self-congratulations. If combined housing became necessary in 1970, the change could not defend a loss of civility. What matters is not life's changes but the way we react to them--"on what moral basis and with what style we meet the inevitable," Trilling said.

The advice is weighty. Trilling chooses her words so well she might be reading from her new manuscript. The emphasis on style seems picky, but Trilling is no Emily Post. Social elitism, based on knowing which knife to use for pate, she said, is silly. When used properly style can ease both class and sexual distinctions. Manners let you act without awkwardness. They force people together. "Holding the door," she said, "at least makes you acknowledge that someone else exists."

In Radcliffe's case, manners might have made combined housing easier on students. Radcliffe and its students should have known better. You don't suspend rules and expect people to enjoy playing the game.