Letter
from Wellesley 1945
The Bea Blog consists of diaries and
letters written by my grandmother Bea Cohen Rubin (1899-1985) and other members
of her family. For more information about Bea and how this blog came about, see Part I -- Intro and 1913 under Blog Archive.
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| My mother Ande Rubin (right) and her best friend Bernice Richman in their senior year at Horace Mann High School for Girls, 1943 |
My
mother Ande Rubin (Bea’s daughter) attended Wellesley for her freshman and
sophomore years, from 1943 to 1945. She transferred to Barnard in 1945 and graduated
in 1947. She was very unhappy at Wellesley and she wrote a number of angry --
yet also funny -- rants citing Wellesley’s flaws. (It probably didn’t help that Ande's best friend from high school was at another college, and Ande's sister Jean, a junior at Wellesley when Ande arrived, loved Wellesley and was successful there both academically and socially.)
Soon
after her 19th birthday in March 1945, Ande writes to her mother Bea:
Today, I practically
died – quite literally. In Badminton class, we have to jump rope for about 10
minutes continuously – I feel absolutely ill afterwards. I get completely
winded and my heart just goes a mile a minute. I see no reason to force myself
to do this outrageous stuff when it has such an appalling effect on me and can
do me nothing but harm. I am sure it will take 3 years off my life (that’s no
fooling).
She
illustrates her point with a cartoon:
Among
Ande’s other complaints are what she sees as lack of intellectual rigor among
her classmates and the failings of her English professors:
Mr. Houghton, though I
don’t dislike him, makes me so mad. He told me yesterday that “the course was
failing me” and that although I did very well on my tests, that he was sure I
didn’t think in general or have intellectual interest. WELL! I told him right
there and then that one of my objections to Wellesley was that I felt so many
of the girls have acquired information, yes, but that they didn’t actually
think and that by God, I did! No one can tell me I don’t think because
what gets me so is that most of the people around here don’t think one tenth as
much as I do. Then he tells me he has been speaking to Mr. Kirby-Miller who has
told him how difficult I was last year. When I think of what KM did to my
English and his complete lack of appreciation for anything that was even
slightly imaginative or subtle, it makes me sick but what could I say to Mr.
Houghton? Then he holds [Classmate X] up to me as an example – how she always
talks in class, thinks, etc. so I said, “Mr. Houghton, one has to take into
consideration difference in personalities” because I am seriously not disposed
towards talking in class and that’s no barometer of intelligence or lack of
it (and I “think” every bit as much as [Classmate
X] and possibly a little more and I’d take ten of me to her any day, even if
that does sound awful). There is a certain kind of personality that is
appreciated by Wellesley – a sort of eager, exuberant, enthusiastic,
superficial, naïve kind that I am NOT and since Wellesley can’t change
me and I can’t change Wellesley, it’s all pretty frustrating.
“Mr.
Kirby-Miller” and “Mr. Houghton” were English professors Charles Kerby-Miller and
Walter Houghton.
Ed. Note: When
I was applying to colleges in 1978, my grandmother Bea told me several times
that Ande was so happy to transfer from Wellesley to Barnard, that “Barnard could do no wrong.”
