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“Scholar,” “Lady,” “Best Man in the English Department”?—Recalling the Career of Marjorie Hope Nicolson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
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“We came late enough to escape the self-consciousness and the belligerence of the pioneers, to take education and training for granted. We came early enough to take equally for granted professional positions in which we could make full use of our training. This was our double glory.” Speaking before an audience at the University of Michigan, her alma mater, in 1937 Marjorie Hope Nicolson, then Dean of Smith College, reflected on the heady years during which she, Class of 1914, and her female contemporaries came of age. These lines, later published in a well-known essay entitled “The Rights and Privileges Pertaining Thereto…,” are often quoted in histories of women's higher education to capture the circumstances—among them, peaking female enrollments, rising doctorates, and wartime employment—that buoyed the aspirations and career ambitions of college women in the early decades of the twentieth century. By vividly evoking the spirit of possibility that so deeply influenced women in the Progressive Era, Nicolson's description, in turn, offered an equally telling perspective on the disillusionment that many female graduates experienced later, in the wake of vastly changed employment realities and a widespread backlash against women's advances. “We did not realize that such fever is inevitably followed by reaction…. Within a decade shades of the prison house began to close.”
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References
1 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “The Rights and Privileges Pertaining ‘Thereto…“ in A University Between Two Centuries, ed. Shaw, Wilfred B. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1937), 414. A condensed version of this speech appeared in Journal of American Association of University Women 31 (April 1938): 135–42.Google Scholar
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47 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “The Value of the Academic Life,” Box 954 Nicolson Papers. Similarly, during World War II, Nicolson, then Phi Beta Kappa president, disagreed with Mrs. Roosevelt's assertion that women students should interupt their educations and immediately join the war effort. See “Women's opportunity for Service,“ clipping dated December 11, 1942, Box 954, Nicolson Papers.Google Scholar
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55 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “Science and Imagination,“ Alumnae Weekend Manuscript (October 19, 1935), 6. Box 952, Nicolson Papers. See also, idem., “The Early Stage of Cartesianism in England,” Studies in Philology 26 (July 1929): 371; and idem., “The Microscope and English Imagination,” Smith College Studies in Modern Languages 16 (July 1935): 92.Google Scholar
56 Nicolson, “Rights and Privileges…,“ 405.Google Scholar
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105 Nicolson's review of the Harvard report both reflected her standing as an academic statewoman and her willingness to urge professors to see themselves also as teachers and, therefore, to be concerned with the quality of education at all levels. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, “Education in America,” Yale Review 35 (March 1946): 537, 538.Google Scholar
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109 See Alumnae Survey of 1924, University of Michigan Alumni Association Records, Box 110, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. I would like to thank archivist Nancy Bartlett for bringing this survey to my attention.Google Scholar
110 Quoted in New York Times, 29 December 1963; Nicolson, “A Generous Education,” 6.Google Scholar
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112 I have found no master's essay or dissertation on Nicolson's life and career.Google Scholar