1900-1909

This image depicts a female Dickinsonian enjoying an athletic event. The image was found in the 1906 yearbook and was printed with color.

The 1905 Microcosm includes a story abour what Dickinson College would be fifty years in the future: 1955. The Dickinson of 1955 is much different than the Dickinson of 1905. The author highlights the difference in housing for women. He wrote, "There isn't a hen coop any more. We call it the "gilded cage". The college bought the deer park you used to tell me about, enlarged the house, built a gymansium adjoining, and made everything so lovely for the girls that the fellows had to change the name."

This excerpt from the Microcosm discusses the beauty of the co-ed. Each woman of the class of 1905  is named and her most striking feature is listed. The identity of the woman in the portrait is not known.

This photo depicts a group of female students eating pickles on the steps of Lloyd Hall. The women are from the class of 1902.

 

 

In her 1909 essay "The Education of Woman in America", S. Margaret Gruber traced the history of women's education and argued that women's higher education was essential. She began her essay by discussing the history of women's education from "household drudgery" to women's higher education. She argued that women's higher education did not impare women's health but made them more vigorous. Moreover, she asserted that women who attended institutions of higher education did still marry and bear children.

In her essay  "The Value of a Classical Education in Modern Times," Laura M. Sweigert argued for the great importance of classical education in the United States. She asserted that classical education was important for five main reasons:

In her essay titled "The Mission of a Trained Nurse," Kathleen Moore Gooding described the importance and progression of nursing in the United States. According to Gooding, prior to the nursing profession, monks and uneducated people cared for the sick. This led to much pain, sickness, and even death. However, it was not until Florence Nightingale that women became nurses and the profession took off. In closing, she highlighted the work of the Red Cross as proof of the success of the nursing profession.

In her essay titled "The Evolution of the Fittest Education," Sarah H. Kistler analyzed the education system in the United States. She wrote that education "should be the whole system of preparation of youth for the life and work coming to the individual, to help on the pregress of the race by his influecne with, and work for , the fellow man.

In her essay "Frances Willard's True Place as Social Reformer," Ruth W. Rinker analyzed the life and work of Frances Willard. She argued that "In Frances Willard our age has lost one of its nobelest daughters, whose achievements for God and home and native land were such as to rank her as one of the most famous women of this century." Throughout her essay, she cited Willard's reform work in the women's ritghts and temperance movements.

In her essay titled "The Civic Movement Among Women," Alice M. Clarkson analyzed women's influence in civic and reform movements of the early twentieth century. She argued that women's position as mothers in the home made them ideal candidates for social reform. She wrote, "They are the natural domestic housekeepers, and what more proper than that they should become civic housekeepers? they abate nuisances in the household. Why not in the city?" Clarkson contended that women's patience and persitence made them ideal reformers.