Flappers and Rebellion

This afternoon Irene and I interviewed Dr. Carolyn Whittenburg, Director of the National Institute of American History and Democracy (NIAHD) at the College of William & Mary. Dr. Whittenburg did her dissertation on coeducation at William & Mary and is certainly one of our best resources here on campus. What I found incredibly interesting about our discussion was the way that Dr. Whittenburg’s comments on coeducation at William & Mary really mirrored the general history given by Barbara Miller Solomon in her book In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America. Both discuss how the flapper ideal of the 1920s was at odds with the traditional rules and regulations for female college students. Solomon notes that “the 1920s marked a new vogue for the college girl who entered school in the age of the flapper” (Solomon 157). It is interesting to consider that while Solomon is writing from the perspective of women having been in college before the age of the flapper, the very first women to enroll in William & Mary did so as this icon was on the rise – there was no pre-flapper William & Mary woman.

While some of the images available in Swem Special Collections’ online exhibit on women, The Petticoat Invasion, reflect a flapper trend, it certainly was not universal on campus. Dress does not appear to be particularly forward-moving, although some of the women in this picture of the J. Lesslie Hall Literary Society are wearing dresses that exhibit the typical asexuality of flapperwear. Janet Coleman Kimbrough, a member of that first class of women, noted that “girls’ skirts were going up; of course, the flapper and jazz and the type of dancing” (Kimbrough), so they certainly were not immune to outside cultural influences.

Solomon discusses how the college students of the 20s were more rebellious than their foremothers, noting that “rebelliousness typified each particular peer culture; students resisted any interference with personal and recreational aspects of college life” (Solomon 159). Dr. Whittenburg described extensive rules to us governing the social lives of William & Mary women, and did not mention a serious resistance effort. Furthermore, , outlines the ways in which students, while they may have resented President Chandler’s rules, did not overtly subjugate them. Kimbrough said that “dancing every evening gave the college rather a bad name from Dr. Chandler's point of view. He said that it was giving the state the impression that they

were spending their state money in riotous living for the students, and so he did away with the social hour, which I thought was a pity. It [dancing] went the first year and about halfway through the second year, then they were forbidden to dance in the dormitory at all” (Kimbrough). She does not mention a serious effort to change the rules. She does note, in reference to “lights out” times, that “you weren't supposed to stay up, but you could get up as early as you pleased, and we would very often go to our rooms and go through the formality of going to bed, and then get up and sit on the stairs and do our studying and also talk to each other” (Kimbrough). Perhaps it was because these women considered themselves lucky to finally be admitted to William & Mary, but while they experienced many of the same restrictions as their peers at other institutions, they were more content to let things be and not rock the boat.

-Cate Domino