Radcliffe on the Cusp

In 1959, Elizabeth H. Carleton ’59 would become the last woman ever to be crowned “Miss Radcliffe.” That year, the annual beauty contest—judged by Harvard professors who would watch the girls read aloud a provided passage—came under scrutiny as two of the nine Radcliffe dorms refused to enter candidates in the contest in protest, claiming it was “against Radcliffe principles.”

The winner was to be featured in a Glamour magazine spread featuring 10 of the best-dressed college women in the United States. In addition to the spread, the winner would receive a lifetime pass to the Brattle Street Theatre and a stuffed bunny rabbit.

Though Moors and Barnard dormitories unanimously voted to boycott the contest—whose competition standards included “good grooming—not just neat, but impeccable”—the competition went on. Cabot and Holmes were the only dormitories that did not express any qualms about the competition, according to a Feb. 14, 1959 Crimson article.

Carleton said that she had no idea that some dormitories had refused to participate in the pageant, but she did remember a “cute” girl in the dorm who did not want to get involved. She was aware that there was some controversy involved—she used to joke that the competition was canceled because she was so ugly that she had scared everyone out of ever wanting to have another one again.

Carleton said that, although this was a beauty contest, it had nothing to do with bathing suits.

“It was very civilized,” she said. “I think they were looking for sophistication—whether you were able to meet a professor and treat him well.”

Although some students’ reactions to the beauty pageant seem to indicate a challenge to traditional gender conventions, the protest was far from radical. But such action was not limited to the pageant. In 1959, Radcliffe women would start to quietly question norms of domesticity through similarly muted means—and the Radcliffe they knew, and the world they lived in during their undergraduate years—would soon become a vestige of a bygone era.

BEGINNING TO BEND THE RULES

Over a dozen members of the Radcliffe class of 1959 said that though they realized there were gender disparities, none said they felt seriously disenfranchised at the time. Many pointed out that the women’s movement was far removed from their college experience.

Still, some women imbued nontraditional motives into traditional practices in order to gain independence from Radcliffe’s restrictive rules and mores.

In addition to the beauty pageant, in 1959, only Radcliffe women had curfews and dining hall chores. Women were not allowed to wear pants in the evenings below the second floor of their dormitories. They were also supervised by a number of “house mothers.”

Few of these house mothers had advanced degrees, as opposed to Harvard’s academically focused tutors.

“Our house mother was wonderful and sweet,” Mary C. Swope ’59 (originally Mary G. Carlton) said. “We got milk and cookies if we weren’t going out on the weekends.”

Though the school’s parietal rules could limit participation in late night extracurricular activities, some women were able to use the curfew to their advantage.

“As freshmen, we were allowed to go out something like 21 times until 1:00 a.m. for the first semester,” Jean P. McNeal ’59 (originally Jean F. Pulis) said. “You may think that is terrible but you could turn it into a game. If you really didn’t like the guy, you could say you had to be home by 10 p.m.”

Swope, who was an editor on the Advocate, remembers that the women on the publication were often prevented from voting on submissions because of Radcliffe’s curfew.

“There was discrimination imposed by the [University] administration because we had to be out of the Advocate office by 10 o’clock,” she said “it was just another indication that women weren’t taken as seriously.”

In order to mitigate strict institutional constraints from the University and their parents, several Radcliffe students used one of the only outs from traditional campus life available at the time: marriage.

Roberta S. Karmel ’59 married at the end of her sophomore year and moved off campus to Back Bay, describing the process as “quite liberating.”

“Getting married was a way to get more independence in your personal life,” she says.

Moving off campus with her husband freed Karmel from many of the social restraints imposed by the house mothers and her parents.

“Whatever my husband and I decided, that’s what we did—I didn’t have to ask my parents,” she said.

However, Karmel’s move was within the confines of her generation. “You were passed from your father’s care to your husband’s care,” she said.

DEFYING CONVENTIONS

Although only a handful of women entered male-dominated professions directly after Radcliffe, those who did quietly defied conventional attitudes and dealt with a lack of female role models which they say initially limited their professional aspirations.

Suzanne W. Sabath ’59 (originally Suzanne R. Wells), who initially concentrated in music, says that most of her classes were with men. Though she says the courses were coeducational, there were subtle gender barriers that ultimately convinced her to leave the concentration for the English department.

Sabath says her music teachers periodically discouraged her from pursuing a career in music, claiming that the field was not appropriate for women.

Yet she claims that even faced with such treatment, women’s issues were not on her mind when she was at Radcliffe.

“At Radcliffe, I didn’t have these feelings, and I’m not sure anyone else did because we didn’t discuss it,” she said. “Women were not allowed in Lamont Library, and we just never even thought about how ridiculous that was.”

Long after Radcliffe, Sabath became heavily involved in the abortion rights activism, presiding over a Massachusetts organization which frequently organized demonstrations on the Boston Common.

Karmel, who said she does not remember a blatant de jure gender divide, says the dearth of females among the Harvard faculty discouraged her from pursuing a Ph.D. She says she thought it would be “practically impossible for a woman to be hired as an academic at an ivy league institution.”

“It was a sign of the times. Most of us generally accepted the discrimination that existed,” she said.

McNeal, who studied biochemical sciences as an undergraduate, said that in the male dominated department, the concentration’s women missed out on a camaraderie shared by the men. In some classes, there were three or four girls in a class of over 200.

McNeal’s thesis adviser, Carroll Williams, regularly held afternoon teas often frequented by noted scientists such as James Watson. However McNeal, as the resident female, was always in charge of making the tea for the others.

Though McNeal thought she could find employment in the sciences, almost no recruiters visited Radcliffe’s campus.

“They would come to Harvard, but we didn’t have access to it,” she said.

She said that especially in the sciences—where the proportions of females were so small—it wasn’t worth the recruiters’ time to draft from a pool of only a handful of females.

According to Sabath, there was “zero recruiting of any sort” and there were only a handful of women who went directly to professional school.

“Most of the women were interested in getting married or teaching,” she said. “That was about it.”

THE DAWNING OF A NEW ERA

In 1959, Radcliffe announced the selection of its fifth president, Mary I. Bunting, a microbiologist and a widow with four children.

Though Bunting’s power was far eclipsed by then-University President Nathan M. Pusey ’28, Bunting oversaw the final integration of Radcliffe and Harvard and subtly changed Radcliffe’s culture of domesticity. She actively encouraged women to enter the professional world and established the Bunting Institute, designed to encourage the higher education of women.

And though members of the class of 1959 did not directly interact with Bunting during her presidency, many said that her installation was a sign that the age of provincialism was slowly drawing to a close.

McNeal said that Bunting—who was a mother and a professional—spurred the change that would eventually come to Radcliffe.

McNeal said that Bunting seemed committed to the women students and making their professional lives meaningful.

“I think she gave credibility to us,” McNeal said. “She brought us a seat at the table with Harvard.”

—Crimson staff writer Brittany M. Llewellyn can be reached at bllewell@fas.harvard.edu. —Crimson staff writer Laura G. Mirviss can be reached at lmirviss@fas.harvard.edu.