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The Ideological Origins of the Women's College: Religion, Class, and Curriculum in the Educational Visions of Catharine Beecher and Mary Lyon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Andrea L. Turpin
Andrea L. Turpin*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Extract

In 1828, as the movement to improve educational opportunities for American women was gaining in prominence, Catharine Beecher approached first Mary Lyon, and a year later Lyon's associate Zilpah Grant, to join her as instructor at Hartford Female Seminary. Consonant with the era of optimistic reform in which she lived, Beecher believed Hartford could change the world, so she wanted the most well-known female educators on board. The key to Hartford's influence was to be the type of students it attracted. Beecher wrote to Grant that a “woman of piety and active benevolence, with wealth which enables her to take the lead in society, can do more good than another of equally exalted character without it.” Lyon and Grant both declined.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , May 2010 , pp. 133 - 158
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Copyright © 2010 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Grant, Zilpah to Emerson, Joseph, 11 November 1829, printed in Linda Thayer Guilford, The Use of a Life: Memorials of Mrs. Z. P. Banister (New York: American Tract Society, 1885), 142–45.Google Scholar

2 Lyon, Mary to Grant, Zilpah, March 1, 1833, printed in Hitchcock, Edward, ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence Illustrated in the Life and Labors of Mary Lyon (Northampton: Hopkins, Bridgman, and Co., 1851), 178.Google Scholar

3 Classic works concentrating substantially on the Seven Sisters are Barbara Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985) and Horowitz, Helen, Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth–Century Beginnings to the 1930s (New York: Knopf, 1984), in addition to individual studies of the particular schools, most notably Patricia Palmieri, In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). Gordon, Lynn, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990) bridges the two streams by analyzing women's experience at both prominent women's and prominent coeducational colleges. Notable recent works exploring less elite women's education include Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America's Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Christine Ogren, The American State Normal School: An Instrument of Great Good (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Nash, Margaret, Women's Education in the United States, 1780–1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Tolley, Kim, The Science Education of American Girls: A Historical Perspective (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003); and Beadie, Nancy, Tolley, Kim, eds., Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727–1925 (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002).Google Scholar

4 Jash, , Women's Education in the United States, 10; Kelley, , Learning to Stand and Speak. For an excellent discussion of pre- and post-revisionist historiography on women's seminaries and academies, see Christine Ogren, “‘Precocious Knowledge of Everything’: New Interpretations of Women's Higher Schooling in the US in the Late-18th and Early-19th Centuries,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 39 (2007): 491–502. The classic interpretation of American women's education she discusses is, of course, Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women. More interestingly, however, she notes that many more recent works actually remain well within the structures of Solomon's interpretation of Willard, Beecher, and Lyon: Jane Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Andrea Hamilton, A Vision for Girls: Gender, Education, and the Bryn Mawr School (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); and DeBare, Ilana, Where Girls Come First: The Rise, Fall, and Surprising Revival of Girls’ Schools (New York: Penguin, 2004). She considers Nash, Women's Education in the United States; Tolley, The Science Education of American Girls; and Beadie and Tolley, Chartered Schools to have broken new ground by moving beyond defining women's education primarily with respect to gender ideology.Google Scholar

5 On republican motherhood, see Kerber, Linda K., Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). On the influence of the market revolution on women's education, see Nash, Women's Education in the United States. On the connection between feminism, abolitionism, and women's education, see Scott, Anne Firor, “The Ever-Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary, 1820–1872,” History of Education Quarterly 19 (Spring 1979): 3–25; Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak. Google Scholar

6 Nash, and Hamilton, lead the scholarship in incorporating some of these differences, but both still base their narratives on the educators’ similarities. For Nash class distinctions trump gender and religious distinctions as the key to understanding the academy movement. See Ogren, “Precocious Knowledge of Everything',” 493–99. Thus, although Nash details some of the key differences between Willard, Beecher, and Lyon, she concludes by emphasizing their broadly middle–class similarities: “Willard, Beecher, and Lyon, then, held some similar and some different views of what realms of activity were appropriate for women and what were not. All seemed to fit an acceptable model of middle-class womanhood, especially by virtue of their piety. All three modeled assertiveness and independence.” See Nash, , Women's Education in the United States, 106–9. Likewise, , Hamilton briefly discusses some of the differences between the three and then concludes that the most historically significant fact about these women was their shared belief in women's separate sphere and the importance of educating women. See Hamilton, A Vision for Girls, 7–8.Google Scholar

7 Gordon, , Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 26, 44. Here I follow Linda Eisenmann, “Creating a Framework for Interpreting US Women's Educational History: Lessons from Historical Lexicography,” History of Education 30 (2001): 453–470, which argues for the benefits of replacing access as an organizing principle for the history of women's education with institution building.Google Scholar

8 On Willard's, influence see Scott, “The Ever-Widening Circle.”Google Scholar

9 The best biography of Beecher remains Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973). Also containing good analysis of Beecher's life and thought is Boydston, Jeanne, Kelley, Mary, Margolis, Anne, Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women's Rights and Women's Sphere (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). On her upbringing see also Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (New York: Doubleday, 2006). The best complete biography of Lyon, is Green, Elizabeth Alden, Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke: Opening the Gates (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1979) and the classic treatment of Mount Holyoke's origins is Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “The Founding of Mount Holyoke College,” in Women of America: A History, eds. Berkin, Carol Ruth and Norton, Mary Beth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), 177–201. The first half of the more recent Amanda Porterfield, Mary Lyon and the Mount Holyoke Missionaries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) is also an excellent treatment of Lyon's life.Google Scholar

10 On Oberlin College, see Fletcher, Robert Samuel, A History of Oberlin College From Its Foundation Through the Civil War (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1943), 373–85, 904–9. On Southern women's education, see Christie Anne Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York: New York University Press, 1994). The Civil War so weaked Southern women's institutions financially and educationally that Lynn Gordon considers Progressive era Southern college women as pioneers rather than second generation. See Gordon, , Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 19, 39, 48–49.Google Scholar

11 For Beecher as embodying the liberal arts reformer see Nash, , Women's Education in the United States, 7–10.Google Scholar

12 On domesticity see the classics Welter, Barbara, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976) and Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977) and the more recent Jeanne Boydston, Home & Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). On women and reform, see, for example, Boylan, Anne, The Origins of Women's Activism: New York and Boston, 1797–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), and Ginzberg, Lori, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth–Century United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

13 Sklar, , Catharine Beecher remains the classic in this regard. See also Cott, , The Bonds of Womanhood, and Boydston, , Home & Work. For other examples of the separate sphere lens see Nash, Women's Education in the United States, 7–12. In her convictions, Beecher overlaid an emphasis on the nurturing role of women onto the teaching of liberal Christian ministers such as Horace Bushnell. See Bushnell, Horace, Discourses on Christian Nurture (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1847); Beecher, Catharine, Letters on the Difficulties of Religion (Hartford: Belknap and Hamersley, 1836); and Beecher, Catharine, Common Sense Applied to Religion, or, The Bible and the People (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857). For Beecher's personal account of her religious journey, see Beecher, , “Introduction,” Common Sense Applied to Religion, xv–xxxv.Google Scholar

14 Beecher, Catharine, Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education, Presented to the Trustees of the Hartford Female Seminary, and Published at Their Request (Hartford, CT: Packard & Butler, 1829), 4, 43–53.Google Scholar

15 See Sklar, , Catharine Beecher. Google Scholar

16 For a good overview of the influence of New Divinity theology on Lyon, Mary, see Porterfield, Mary Lyon and the Mount Holyoke Missionaries and Conforti, Joseph A., Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 87–107.Google Scholar

17 For a basic overview of differences and similarities between Lyon, and Beecher, , see Nash, , Women's Education in the Unites States, 106–110. Although Nash notes Lyon believed both sexes should renounce material comfort, she does not clarify the essential difference that unlike many other female reformers, Lyon did not believe in women's moral superiority. On Samuel Hopkins and New Divinity thought in general, see Conforti, Joseph, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity movement: Calvinism, the Congregational Ministry, and Reform in New England between the Great Awakenings (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981).Google Scholar

18 Lyon, Mary, “New England Female Seminary for Teachers” circular, Summer 1832, printed in Hitchcock, , ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 164–67. Hitchcock's memoir is the primary source for information on the life of Mary Lyon. It was compiled by Prof. Edward Hitchcock of Amherst College, one of the Mount Holyoke trustees and a long-time friend and admirer of Mary Lyon. The work consists of letters primarily from Lyon, but occasionally from others as well, cited in full or in part, and interspersed with explanatory commentary supplied by five close associates: Hannah White, who assisted Lyon early in her teaching career; Bannister, Zilpah Grant, who served as Lyon's co-principal at Ipswich Female Seminary in the years before Lyon founded Mount Holyoke; Eunice Caldwell Cowles, who taught with Lyon at Ipswich and was assistant principal of Mount Holyoke its first year; Mary Whitman Eddy, the teacher and associate principal under Lyon who took over as principal immediately upon Lyon's death; and Hitchcock himself (Hitchcock iii–v). Most of Lyon's letters are found only in this memoir, as the contributors seem to have thrown out many of the originals after including them in the text.Google Scholar

19 Green, , Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke, 6–23; Beadie, Nancy, “Internal Improvement: The Structure and Culture of Academy Expansion in New York State in the Antebellum Era, 1820–1860,” in Chartered Schools, eds. Beadie, Nancy, Tolley, Kim, 89–115; Lyon, Mary to Grant, Zilpah, 1 March 1833, printed in Hitchcock, , ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 178.Google Scholar

20 Porterfield, Amanda, Mary Lyon and the Mount Holyoke Missionaries, 31–32. Nash, , Women's Education in the United States, 41–42 notes that in the early Republic “ornamental” education did not always mean frivolous and could be used to describe the education of both men and women. Many nineteenth-century reformers nevertheless polemically dismissed it as social climbing.Google Scholar

21 Beecher, , Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education; Sklar, Catharine Beecher, 59–104. On the traditional nature of instruction in social accomplishments see Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak, 69–73.Google Scholar

22 Mount Holyoke College Archives, Lyon, Mary Collection (hereafter abbreviated as MHC Archives, ML Collection), Series A, “Catharine Beecher to Mary Lyon, July 10, 1828.” http://clio.fivecoUeges.edu/mhc/lyon/a/2/ff01/280710/transcript/01.html; Sklar, , Catharine Beecher, 90–93; Beecher, Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education, 40–50.Google Scholar

23 Beecher, Catharine to Grant, Zilpan, n.d. provided, printed in Guilford, The Use of a Life, 141–42; Beecher, , Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education, 40–50, 59, 70–75.Google Scholar

24 Sklar, , Catharine Beecher, 90–93; Green, Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke, 57–60; Hitchcock, ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 129–30; Beecher, Catharine to Grant, Zilpah, n.d. provided, printed in Guilford, The Use of a Life, 141–42. For a contemporary description of the problem of impermanence, see Eliza Adams to Mary Lyon, 28 November 1833, printed in Green, Mary Lyon, 82.Google Scholar

25 Sklar, , Catharine Beecher, 92; Green, , Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke, 38–40.Google Scholar

26 Grant, Zilpah to Emerson, Joseph, 11 November 1829, printed in Guilford, , Use of a Life, 142–45; Beecher, Lyman to Grant, Zilpah, 12 November 1829, printed in Guilford, , Use of a Life, 145–48; Grant to Emerson, n.d. provided, printed in Guilford, Use of a Life, 148–49; Guilford, , Use of a Life, 149. On Grant's polish, see Green, , Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke, 38–43. For comparison, at Mount Holyoke no teacher earned more than US$225. See Hitchcock, , ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 293. Beecher continued to admire Grant and when Beecher later in life sought to educate rich and poor together, Grant lent her support by serving on the board of Beecher's American Woman's Educational Association. See Guilford, The Use of a Life, 294–95 and Beecher, Common Sense Applied to Religion, 357.Google Scholar

27 Beecher, , Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education, 72–76; Sklar, , Catharine Beecher, 93–94.Google Scholar

28 Beecher, Catharine, Educational Reminiscences and Suggestions (New York: J. B. Ford and Company, 1874), 82–86; Sklar, , Catharine Beecher, 107–121, 129–32.Google Scholar

29 Hitchcock, , ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 158–60.Google Scholar

30 Hitchcock, , ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 293; Lyon, to Grant, , 24 February 1833, printed in Hitchcock, ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 175–76; Lyon, Mary, “To The Friends and Patrons of Ipswich Female Seminary” circular, reprinted in Hitchcock, , ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 187–89; Emerson, Joseph, Discourse, Delivered at the Dedication of the Seminary Hall in Saugus, Jan. 15, 1822 (Boston: Samuel T. Armstrong and Crocker & Brewster; New York: John P. Haven, 1822), 27.Google Scholar

31 Lyon, Mary to White, Hannah, 1 August 1834, printed in Hitchcock, ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 198–99.Google Scholar

32 Lyon, Mary, “Tendencies of the Principles embraced and the System adopted in the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary,” 1839, reprinted in Hitchcock, ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 299–308, 304; Hitchcock, , ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 289.Google Scholar

33 MHC Archives, ML Collection, Series A, “Catharine Beecher to Lyon, Mary, June 26, 1836.” http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/mhc/lyon/a/2/ff07/360626/01.htm; Sklar, , Catharine Beecher, 129–32; Lyon, Mary to Beecher, Catharine, 1 July 1836, printed in Hitchcock, ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 225–29.Google Scholar

34 Lyon, Mary to Catharine Beecher, 1 July 1836, printed in Hitchcock, , ed., The Power of Christian Benevolence, 225–29. For Lyon's fundraising techniques, see Green, Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke, 159.Google Scholar

35 MHC Archives, ML Collection, Series A, “Lyon, Mary to Caldwell, Eunice, July 3, 1836.” http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/mhc/lyon/a/1/ff8/360703/01.htm. For an overview of the Beecher-Lyon exchange, see also Green, , Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke, 156–59, although Green overlooks Lyon's letter to Caldwell recounting Beecher's response. Lyon had tried earlier to secure Beecher's public support in 1834, but what Beecher had offered was that Lyon could control any proceeds that resulted from helping to sell Beecher's new textbook (except, Beecher noted, an unspecified amount she would reserve for her own livelihood)—and she wanted the transaction kept secret. Beecher had nonetheless written Lyon that she approved of educating the class of women on whom Lyon was focused, again because doing so would expand the female teaching base. She did not appear to know at that time about Lyon's proposed low teacher salaries. See MHC Archives, ML Collection, Series A, “Beecher, Catherine to Lyon, Mary, October 15, 1834.” http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/mhc/lyon/a/2/ff06/341015/01.htm, and MHC Archives, ML Collection, Series A, “Beecher to Lyon, October 27, 1834.” http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/mhc/lyon/a/2/ff06/341027/01.htm.Google Scholar

36 Sklar, , Catharine Beecher, 151–83, 217–26; Beecher, , Educational Reminiscences and Suggestions, 149–59; Horowitz, Alma Mater, 30.Google Scholar

37 On the founding of Vassar see Horowitz, , Alma Mater, 28–41, and Taylor, James Monroe, Before Vassar Opened: A Contribution to the History of the Higher Education of Women in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914). On Lyon's curriculum, see Green, . Mary Lyon, 182–205.Google Scholar

38 Nash, , Women's Education in the United States, 35–52; Tolley, , The Science Education of American Girls, 35–53. Nash notes that in opposition to Latin grammar schools that focused on college preparation, academy curricula centered on practical education for life. Men and women received similar professional training for clerical jobs.Google Scholar

39 College, Vassar Female, First Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Vassar Female College, 1865–66 (New York: John A. Gray and Green, 1866), 20; Horowitz, , Alma Mater, 28–41.Google Scholar

40 Taylor, , Before Vassar Opened, 138–40, 248–50; Raymond, John Howard, Vassar College. A College for Women, in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. A Sketch of Its Foundation, Aims, and Resources, and of the Development of Its Scheme of Instruction to the Present Time. Prepared by the President of the College, at the Request of the United States Commissioner of Education, May, 1873 (New York: S.W.Green, 1873), 19–31; Horowitz, , Alma Mater, 28–41.Google Scholar

41 Horowitz, , Mater, Alma, 28–41; First Annual Catalogue of Vassar Female College, 42; Twenty-Ninth Annual Catalogue of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, 1865–66 (Northampton: Bridgman and Childs, 1866), 23; Beecher, , Educational Reminiscences and Suggestions, 184–89. For discussion of expenses at women's colleges, see Solomon, In The Company of Educated Women, 62–66. Holyoke, Mount and Amherst, course catalogues, 1837–65, available on Five College Archives Digital Access Project. http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/mhc/catalogs/.Google Scholar

42 Horowitz, , Mater, Alma, 42–55; Converse, Florence, The Story of Wellesley (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1919); Thirty-Ninth Annual Catalogue of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, 1875–76 (Northampton: Bridgman and Childs, 1876), 22; First Wellesley Announcement, December, 1874, 4, Wellesley College Archives. In fact, according to Wellesley Professor Mary Case, the presence of richer girls ultimately caused the abolition of the domestic system, making it still harder for poorer girls to attend: “The poorer girls, trained to such work at home, were usually faithful and efficient, but those who came from well-to-do families that kept a maid were too often careless or ignorant, and their work was a dangerous tax upon the resources of the college. [President] Irvine convinced the trustees that a change was necessary and thus relieved the situation.” Mary S. Case, notes for “An Appreciation of President Irvine,” Julia Irvine Papers, Wellesley College Archives. For initial curriculum see Palmieri, In Adamless Eden, 12.Google Scholar

43 Horowitz, , Alma Mater, 69–81; Smith College Archives, Annual Circulars: 1872–1909, “1874 Circular,” 7. http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/smith/catalogs/1874/index.shtml?page=1. For further financial information, see Gordon, Sarah H., “Smith College Students: The First Ten Classes, 1879–1888,” History of Education Quarterly 15 (Summer 1975): 147–167.Google Scholar

44 The Eastern women's colleges remained expensive, and no major change in student social class is discernable 1870–1920. See Gordon, , Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 5–6. Horowitz, , Alma Mater gives an overview of the religious life of the colleges.Google Scholar

45 Rudolph, Frederick, Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study Since 1636 (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass, 1977), 124, 169. Many professors at women's colleges did believe all professions ought to open to women and likely influenced some of their students to push professional boundaries (see, e.g., Palmieri, In Adamless Eden). Nash, , Women's Education in the United States; Tolley, , The Science Education of American Girls; and Beadie, and Tolley, , Chartered Schools all assert students’ desire for self-improvement as a major reason for seeking education, and Nash in particular emphasizes pure intellectual pleasure as a significant motive. Mary Cookingham, “Bluestockings, Spinsters and Pedagogues: Women College Graduates, 1865–1910,” Population Studies 38 (November 1984): 349–64, 355; Solomon, , In the Company of Educated Women, 83–85. The phenomenon of college often raising expectations for women students that society did not fulfill is discussed in Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 9–10.Google Scholar