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Remaking the Image: Promotional Literature of Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley Colleges in the mid-to-late 1940s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Deborah M. Olsen
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A large number of social, demographic, and other factors converged in the mid-to-late 1940s to place women's colleges in the United States in an awkward, if not precarious, position. The dominant cultural conditions and values of this early “post-feminist” era were at odds with many of the core values and traditions of such long-established and respected institutions as Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley Colleges. Since their respective foundings in 1837, 1875, and 1875, these colleges have been variously characterized as pioneers in women's education, unique communities of women nurturing women and women's scholarship, dangerous centers of feminist and other radical ideas, anachronistic holdovers from a bygone era, endangered institutions marking time until they become co-educational, and leaders in feminist scholarship. Choosing not to follow the example of Vassar, which opened its doors to men in 1968, these colleges and a few others like them survived the difficult years when the “Ivy League” colleges first admitted women. Today there is not much question about their reputation or permanence, yet in the post-World War II era their future was not as secure.

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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , Winter 2000 , pp. 418 - 459
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Copyright © 2000 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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77 Mount Holyoke—everybody's college, n.p. In 1947, for example, the Houston Post in the article “What Can We Do About Divorce?” featured a large photo of two beaming Mount Holyoke students with a group of pre-schoolers as they “study problems of rearing children. Training like this [declared the Post] makes for happier marriages.” “What Can We Do About Divorce,” Post, Parade section, 7 September 1947, 7.Google Scholar

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