Undergraduate Life at Smith College

Undergraduate Life at Smith College

The item I choose to analyze is an article called “Undergraduate Life at Smith College” This article gives a comprehensive description of what life is like for an average student at Smith College. The audience could be many people, but I believe it to be the young women of the middle and upper class on the East Coast. Alice Katherine Fallows, the author of this article, also wrote other things. She wrote a self-help book series that was featured in the Journal of Education. It’s apparent while reading the article that Fallows is an alumni of Smith College and gained a positive outlook on being an educated women. She speaks frankly on what it’s like to go to Smith and highlights all the positives of being a woman at Smith College. The illustrator, Walter Appleton Clark, also seems to have direction with his art work in the article. Clark was the official illustrator for the Scribner’s Magazine for many years. His art work represents the movement towards impressionism and modernism which perfectly captures the essence of what a women’s college was at that time, a new modern way forward. For an example, there is a sketch on page 45 called the “Practice Illustration”. This illustration features a group of girls practicing some sport on the field. Heavy, dark outlines are used throughout the drawing and the girls are depicted roughly shoving each other. This is the opposite way a woman would be depicted from previous decades. Clark also uses defined yet ghostly forms to draw the faces of the girls playing. Some are depicted smiling, others frowning, and the rest don’t really have a face. (Fallows, 45) The contrast between dark heavy lines and the lightly drawn faces, show the pull and tug that existed in being a New Woman.
What makes this item interesting is that it solely focused on women outside the sphere of domesticity. I believe that this is representative of the New Woman Movement. It shows the movement from training in the home to in the job force. It also shows the beginnings of the first wave of feminism. For an example, Fallows describes students’ attitudes towards Smith College. She says that “…a student wish[es] to be the best kind of college woman, instead of some weak imitation of a college man.”(Fallow, 41) Here she establishing that women’s colleges are just as prestigious and valid as men’s colleges. She emphasizes this by using strong language like “weak imitation”. She also breaks down the myths of women’s colleges. She continues saying that “College is not a cloister, to develop a race of nuns. It opens up to a girl many new connections with her fellow-beings.” (Fallow, 41) Fallow is highlighting the positives of being a part of a women’s college by first debunking the myth and then providing what women’s colleges do instead.

Alice Katherine Fallows and Walter Appleton Clark

Fallows, Alice Katherine. "Undergraduate Life at Smith College." Scribner's Magazine July 1898:
37-58. Print.

Scribner's Magazine

November 3, 2015

Gabriella Green