1 00:00:07,940 --> 00:00:18,050 So I'd like to start with a letter that second year Somerville student Karris Barnett wrote home to her parents in October of 1913. 2 00:00:18,050 --> 00:00:27,890 And in this letter, she explains that her best friend, another Summersville student, Dorothy Rowe, quote, had a ripping idea for a party. 3 00:00:27,890 --> 00:00:31,460 But we have since had to abandon it as dangerous. 4 00:00:31,460 --> 00:00:40,310 We seven were each to ask what we considered the typical woman student, and no one must know whom the others had asked. 5 00:00:40,310 --> 00:00:44,600 It turned out afterwards that several of us had fixed on the same one. 6 00:00:44,600 --> 00:00:53,770 There were other details. One was a prise for the hostess, whose guest was the most woman student ish during the party. 7 00:00:53,770 --> 00:01:01,560 I came across this letter in the course of researching a group of friends who attended Somerville College with Karris Barnetts. 8 00:01:01,560 --> 00:01:04,300 That was a group of friends who founded the writing group, 9 00:01:04,300 --> 00:01:12,130 which they called they called themselves the Mutual Admiration Society, and they remained friends for the rest of their lives. 10 00:01:12,130 --> 00:01:17,230 They were part of a really important generation in terms of the centenary that we're 11 00:01:17,230 --> 00:01:22,630 here to celebrate today because they attended Oxford just before the First World War. 12 00:01:22,630 --> 00:01:32,770 At a time when it was possible for women to participate in many of the activities that that were associated with typical undergraduate life. 13 00:01:32,770 --> 00:01:42,250 So they attended lectures. They sat for exams. They lived in a college setting, although a very specific kind of college setting. 14 00:01:42,250 --> 00:01:47,440 They took part in activities like hunting and debate and so on. 15 00:01:47,440 --> 00:01:57,370 But they were still, of course, barred from officially taking degrees and many of them would attend that first degree ceremony in October of 1920. 16 00:01:57,370 --> 00:02:02,560 In addition to Karris Barnett, who later married and became Karris Frank Enberg, 17 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:10,960 my talk today will draw on the experiences of the most famous member of the Circle of Friends that I mentioned the mutual admiration society, 18 00:02:10,960 --> 00:02:21,230 the true crime novelists. Dorothy L. Sayers. So the letter about the woman's student party really struck me. 19 00:02:21,230 --> 00:02:28,850 What did it mean to be woman student ish? How could you be sort of more or less woman student ish? 20 00:02:28,850 --> 00:02:30,320 Right. Because that's what they're talking about. 21 00:02:30,320 --> 00:02:41,090 They're talking about inviting the most woman student dish person that they know and having a prise for who's the most woman student dish of all. 22 00:02:41,090 --> 00:02:52,930 And why ultimately did Carrison, her friends, who were, after all, women and students, ultimately shy away from this party as too dangerous? 23 00:02:52,930 --> 00:02:58,660 So the first thing that I want to be clear about here is that the category of students, 24 00:02:58,660 --> 00:03:08,740 as in specifically Oxford undergraduate student, was implicitly male at this time and would remain so for for some decades afterward. 25 00:03:08,740 --> 00:03:16,960 The image of the Oxford undergraduate that had been kind of canonised in in popular culture 26 00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:22,600 in the 19th century and that continued to be really influential in the 20th century, 27 00:03:22,600 --> 00:03:30,340 kind of conjured up ideas of youth, of privilege, hijinx, of intellectual engagement. 28 00:03:30,340 --> 00:03:40,360 All of that in a resolute masculine mode in the person of of of really a male undergraduate student. 29 00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:42,580 And it's pretty easy, I think, as well, 30 00:03:42,580 --> 00:03:49,580 to picture the stereotype that that and her friends ultimately decided was too dangerous to base a party on her. 31 00:03:49,580 --> 00:03:59,380 Or maybe too unkind to base a party on the woman student as a kind of figure of fun was a subset of the category of spinster. 32 00:03:59,380 --> 00:04:01,780 The category of old maid. 33 00:04:01,780 --> 00:04:13,160 So someone who was messy, who was scattered, who was unmarriageable importantly, who was freakishly devoted to books and who was socially inept. 34 00:04:13,160 --> 00:04:25,260 So. If being a stereotypical Oxford undergraduate was not available to women at this time and being a woman student ish was alarming. 35 00:04:25,260 --> 00:04:32,540 Well, I want to explore in this talk is what these young people at Summerville College actually did. 36 00:04:32,540 --> 00:04:39,120 And I want to use kind of student life and activities as a way into what I think was actually a panoply 37 00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:45,200 of what we might call gendered ways of being to use very 21st century language and not at all. 38 00:04:45,200 --> 00:04:55,620 Early 20th century language. So in place of this dreaded stereotype of the woman's student, 39 00:04:55,620 --> 00:05:01,350 I would like instead to talk about five other characters or ways of being that that carries Burnett. 40 00:05:01,350 --> 00:05:07,920 Dorothy L. Sayers and their friends actually did want to be or at least try their hands at being. 41 00:05:07,920 --> 00:05:16,480 And I want to point out that each of these roles, in a way was a different kind of performance that drew in elements of masculinity and femininity. 42 00:05:16,480 --> 00:05:17,970 And I think. Taken together. 43 00:05:17,970 --> 00:05:33,890 Tell us something interesting about what it meant to be a woman student in these in the decade, really leading up to the granting of degrees in 1920. 44 00:05:33,890 --> 00:05:39,800 All right, so the first of the five, the accidental tourist. 45 00:05:39,800 --> 00:05:49,430 So embracing feminine femininity, fully conventional ways of being feminine in this era meant risking not being seen as a student at all. 46 00:05:49,430 --> 00:05:54,560 So in karass memoir, she recalls having permanent. 47 00:05:54,560 --> 00:05:56,150 I'm just going to quote from her memoir here. 48 00:05:56,150 --> 00:06:06,320 She recalls having a very pretty dress shot silk in blue, green and golden brown, wearing it to a lecture on my way to the river. 49 00:06:06,320 --> 00:06:15,020 I was asked by the porter for the only time in my career to show my ticket in order to keep up the illusion of being an American tourist. 50 00:06:15,020 --> 00:06:19,730 I produced the looking glass and powdered my nose, causing a mild sensation. 51 00:06:19,730 --> 00:06:27,330 A St. Johns man said, I suppose there are two kinds of girl at Somerville, freaks and girls like you. 52 00:06:27,330 --> 00:06:33,930 That's the end of the quote. And this image here is from a few years later when when after the First World 53 00:06:33,930 --> 00:06:42,030 War had broken out and Karris Burnat volunteered to serve with friends society. 54 00:06:42,030 --> 00:06:49,960 I think it captures her both as a tourist and in this kind of slightly glamorous looking mode. 55 00:06:49,960 --> 00:06:57,160 In the story she tells from her memoir, Wearing this silk dress leads to being seen as a tourist in Oxford, 56 00:06:57,160 --> 00:07:00,820 even when she's ultimately recognised as a student. She's produced her ticket. 57 00:07:00,820 --> 00:07:11,470 She gets to go into the lecture. It's in a way that contrasts her appearance with the freaks, for which Somerville is allegedly known as freaks, 58 00:07:11,470 --> 00:07:21,060 being in some ways a sharper way, I think, of countering the dangers of being a woman students. 59 00:07:21,060 --> 00:07:30,030 So at the opposite end of the clothing spectrum, at least the trousers roll within the confines of Summerville College, 60 00:07:30,030 --> 00:07:38,490 students could use fancy dress parties and theatrical performances as spaces to try wearing entirely masculine clothing. 61 00:07:38,490 --> 00:07:43,670 And indeed, in their terms, dressing up as men. 62 00:07:43,670 --> 00:07:53,000 Again, in October 1913, Dorothy L. Sayers attended a fancy dress dance, an old fashioned masculine attire, playing the violin. 63 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:58,790 Dancing until half past eleven and impressing everyone with her impersonation. 64 00:07:58,790 --> 00:08:05,920 She told her parents that even Emily Penrose Surrell, some rebels are formidable principal at the time. 65 00:08:05,920 --> 00:08:14,090 Quote was completely puzzled. So she tells her parents she stared at me for about five minutes and then had to be told who I was. 66 00:08:14,090 --> 00:08:19,650 It surprises everyone that I make up so well as a man. It surprises me rather. 67 00:08:19,650 --> 00:08:25,940 And I love that letter because I think it shows kind of the intensity of this fancy 68 00:08:25,940 --> 00:08:32,720 dress costume and also the way that it could raise questions about a sense of self, 69 00:08:32,720 --> 00:08:42,590 a sense of identity. She's Sayer's is describing learning something about herself in this experience of being unrecognisable. 70 00:08:42,590 --> 00:08:46,790 Dressed up as a as a man. And a little bit about. 71 00:08:46,790 --> 00:08:51,110 About this photograph, which is just like my favourite photograph of all time, 72 00:08:51,110 --> 00:08:59,780 I think the great unrequited crush of Dorothy L. Sayers is College Years was the conductor of the Bach Choir. 73 00:08:59,780 --> 00:09:10,700 Dr. Hugh Percy Allen. Later, Sir Hugh, you, Percy Allen. She pursued a fairly stylised sort of crushin flirtation, a visa v Allen. 74 00:09:10,700 --> 00:09:18,770 And in the going downplay of 1915, Sayers was the musical director of that of that play out in Summerville College. 75 00:09:18,770 --> 00:09:30,610 And and she also performed the absurd fictional fictionalised version of Hugh Percy Allen, Doctor HP Rowland Tondo. 76 00:09:30,610 --> 00:09:39,620 Another example of her really inhabiting joyously that the trousers roll. 77 00:09:39,620 --> 00:09:44,930 So that kind of dressing up could be imagined as a form of drag, deliberately theatrical, 78 00:09:44,930 --> 00:09:51,230 deliberately playing with any and indeed mocking conventions of gendered behaviour in clothing. 79 00:09:51,230 --> 00:09:57,620 But there were other ways also of claiming aspects of masculinity within Summersville student life. 80 00:09:57,620 --> 00:10:05,930 And I want to talk about two of those next. The first one is the parliamentarian, which I think is a particularly striking example. 81 00:10:05,930 --> 00:10:14,940 So Somervell had its own parliament, the Summersville parliament, which was a debating society that followed the procedures of the House of Commons. 82 00:10:14,940 --> 00:10:20,100 And in the context of this parliament, Somerville's students, including Kairis Burnett, 83 00:10:20,100 --> 00:10:24,900 really were rehearsing for a citizenship that they weren't yet entitled to hold. 84 00:10:24,900 --> 00:10:33,810 So all of this is happening right in the midst of the debate over the right of women to vote in the midst of the suffrage campaign. 85 00:10:33,810 --> 00:10:40,190 Carice went to some suffrage meetings, although she was not a dedicated suffragette and by any means. 86 00:10:40,190 --> 00:10:45,900 But so this parliament exists in this moment when being a member of parliament, 87 00:10:45,900 --> 00:10:58,150 being an MP is restricted to men and rather than invents a female form or a feminine mode of of holding that kind of position of authority, 88 00:10:58,150 --> 00:11:04,800 the Summersville parliamentarians just just inhabited these this sort of masculine role. 89 00:11:04,800 --> 00:11:10,860 They used male titles. They also used masculine pronouns in the context of the parliament. 90 00:11:10,860 --> 00:11:14,730 So, for example, Karris made her dramatic maiden speech. 91 00:11:14,730 --> 00:11:21,000 And in the midst of it, she was interrupted by the chairman and chairman was the word that they used. 92 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:24,900 The chairman interrupted Karris and said, Order, order. 93 00:11:24,900 --> 00:11:30,900 I must ask the honourable gentleman if his point has direct bearing on this clause. 94 00:11:30,900 --> 00:11:37,780 And this was a challenge that the other other employees in this honourable parliament had sort of backed down on. 95 00:11:37,780 --> 00:11:43,230 Karris refused to back down to laughter and then cheers from her own party. 96 00:11:43,230 --> 00:11:46,620 And she she replied to the chairman. I think so, sir. 97 00:11:46,620 --> 00:11:52,650 And then she went on to the end of the end of her speech, which gives you a flavour of carrots as a person, 98 00:11:52,650 --> 00:12:00,450 but also suggests the way that in taking on these roles of MP in an era before there were any female 99 00:12:00,450 --> 00:12:09,380 employees there simply adopting all the male forms and then and then carrying on themselves. 100 00:12:09,380 --> 00:12:16,720 Some of those students could inhabit masculine roles in more subtle ways as well. 101 00:12:16,720 --> 00:12:25,570 They took on masculine nicknames that weren't male alter egos, but equally, that did undercut the traditional quality of their given names. 102 00:12:25,570 --> 00:12:31,000 So in the mutual admiration society, other members included Muriel Yagur, 103 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:37,040 who became known as Jim Yagur, and Catherine Godfrey, who became known as Tony. 104 00:12:37,040 --> 00:12:41,740 And this is a photograph of Muriel St. Clair Byrne, who didn't take on a nickname at all. 105 00:12:41,740 --> 00:12:51,280 She stayed Muriel. But this is a photograph from her fantastic archive that I think there's a very student ish vibe about this. 106 00:12:51,280 --> 00:12:55,060 Not sure it's a woman student. This vibe in the sense that Dorothy Rowe and Karris met. 107 00:12:55,060 --> 00:13:00,130 But so that's that's who this photograph is of. 108 00:13:00,130 --> 00:13:07,480 I've called this one the fellow to get at the way that these students within Summerville College argued 109 00:13:07,480 --> 00:13:14,350 and took up intellectual space in any kind of ways that were coded as more masculine and feminine. 110 00:13:14,350 --> 00:13:15,970 And what I'm trying to get at, I think, 111 00:13:15,970 --> 00:13:25,570 is nicely illustrated by a letter that Dorothy L. Sayers sent to Muriel Jim Yagur when they were all home on holiday. 112 00:13:25,570 --> 00:13:29,860 So Sayres is writing about how she misses her friends. She misses life at all. 113 00:13:29,860 --> 00:13:37,120 At Oxford. She misses being at Somervell. And she's complaining about the foolishness of the friends she was supposed to entertain at home. 114 00:13:37,120 --> 00:13:43,120 So some of the nice young women who lived in the neighbourhoods she was supposed to be friends with, but Manchus back at home. 115 00:13:43,120 --> 00:13:51,390 And she complains especially about who she. The person she calls the vacuous violent. 116 00:13:51,390 --> 00:14:00,840 Violet came over for dinner. Dorothy tried to insist on what she called a sensible arguments, but the polite guests, Violet refused. 117 00:14:00,840 --> 00:14:06,600 So Dorothy L. Sayers pushes things further as she told Jim she, quote, 118 00:14:06,600 --> 00:14:14,340 laid down my ideas in an offensively dogmatic manner, purposely exaggerated in order to promote contradiction. 119 00:14:14,340 --> 00:14:25,450 You know, that offensive manner of mine. But Violet parried with exaggerated modesty and said she bowed to Dorothy's superior knowledge. 120 00:14:25,450 --> 00:14:34,510 Could anything explode? Dorothy, in her letter to Jim Yagur, make a fellow feel a sillier arse. 121 00:14:34,510 --> 00:14:40,150 Within their Summerhill circle, she went on this false and implicitly feminine modesty could never happen. 122 00:14:40,150 --> 00:14:44,650 So she continues, Oh, Jemmy. I miss our allowed voice arguments. 123 00:14:44,650 --> 00:14:52,660 Ever be certain of being quite right? Hang it all what we're tongues made for and lust to argue with. 124 00:14:52,660 --> 00:14:59,470 So in this letter, I think that Sayer's is claiming terms for herself, like fellow silly arse, you know? 125 00:14:59,470 --> 00:15:03,550 Can anything make a fellow feel a sillier arse? I think is such a telling phrase. 126 00:15:03,550 --> 00:15:07,810 Sayers is perfectly playing this part of the insulin undergraduate. 127 00:15:07,810 --> 00:15:21,520 The jolly fellow who longs for the masculine camaraderie of the university rather than the polite domestic chat of the feminine home. 128 00:15:21,520 --> 00:15:28,690 So then this this these are photographs from Muriel Yeager's archive, actually, 129 00:15:28,690 --> 00:15:40,090 so when Sayer's and Yagur went to that graduation ceremony in October of 1920 and they got to wear their proper gowns, 130 00:15:40,090 --> 00:15:48,430 they later on either shortly, a few weeks later, they visited with some of Yeager's relatives and posed for these photographs in their gowns. 131 00:15:48,430 --> 00:16:00,310 So so sort of especially since Hennery themed images, I think are us Sayer's and so on the left arm and Yagur on my right. 132 00:16:00,310 --> 00:16:03,100 Beyond that, Somerville's halls in the wider universe, 133 00:16:03,100 --> 00:16:13,270 the maintaining that that role that Sayer's is is conjuring of a jolly fellow having a good argument with his friends. 134 00:16:13,270 --> 00:16:21,490 Maintaining that role was less easy. And my last vignette is taken again from from Dorothy L. Sayers is Letters Home. 135 00:16:21,490 --> 00:16:28,240 And it focuses on the complexity of navigating these kind of gendered expectations in the context of 136 00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:36,430 attending classes and taking exams where there would also be young male students in her German classes. 137 00:16:36,430 --> 00:16:42,790 Sarah's was frequently the only woman in the room, even in a literature class where she had one female companion. 138 00:16:42,790 --> 00:16:50,050 That student, she said, quote, never says a word and never lifts her eyes from her book. 139 00:16:50,050 --> 00:16:57,460 Later, when it came time to take exams, Sayers found herself the only female student taking a particular language exam. 140 00:16:57,460 --> 00:17:05,440 When she first arrived in the exam room, she recounted. I wandered into the men's part of the room and the door keeper rushed at me with wildly waving 141 00:17:05,440 --> 00:17:12,010 arms and a terrified expression and shooed me away to my seclusion like an intrusive hen. 142 00:17:12,010 --> 00:17:16,570 This is where the title for this this last character comes from the intrusive hen. 143 00:17:16,570 --> 00:17:23,680 Indeed, she said she had to take the exams severely isolated, like a leper in one corner of the room. 144 00:17:23,680 --> 00:17:31,150 Even that, though, didn't suppress Sayers as intellectual self-confidence during the oral examination. 145 00:17:31,150 --> 00:17:34,120 One examiner raised a potentially thorny point. 146 00:17:34,120 --> 00:17:40,700 He said he was very much surprised to see that Sayer's had considered Schillers robbers a pleasing play. 147 00:17:40,700 --> 00:17:48,130 Saras admitted to her parents. That my heart sank into my boots. But she decided to try, which she called an individual touch. 148 00:17:48,130 --> 00:17:54,490 And I'm quoting again from her letter here, relying on the fact that I had put on my best coat and skirt and a becoming hat. 149 00:17:54,490 --> 00:17:59,740 I assumed my most womanly smile and said, Oh, don't you think it is? 150 00:17:59,740 --> 00:18:04,810 He smiled. I was encouraged to give my reasons. He smiled and agreed, at any rate. 151 00:18:04,810 --> 00:18:09,070 He passed me. And I think that vignette gives you a sense of. 152 00:18:09,070 --> 00:18:19,510 Sort of. A woman student this way of being that it's a little bit different and sort of an intrusive hand fighting back. 153 00:18:19,510 --> 00:18:24,490 So to conclude then at Somerville, students had to navigate a classic double bind, 154 00:18:24,490 --> 00:18:29,770 on the one hand that they didn't want to seem to woman student ish or to freakishly absorbed in learning. 155 00:18:29,770 --> 00:18:36,760 On the other hand, expressions of femininity brought different sorts of criticism and scrutiny down upon them as porters, 156 00:18:36,760 --> 00:18:43,210 lecturers, male undergraduates and others resisted the integration of women into Oxford within its walls. 157 00:18:43,210 --> 00:18:50,830 Somerville College tried to balance these imperatives, offering a combination of Oxford student life and the trappings of middle class domesticity. 158 00:18:50,830 --> 00:18:57,320 But most importantly, I think a space for transformation, for trying on ways of being. 159 00:18:57,320 --> 00:19:03,920 In giving this taxonomy today, these five ways of being, I'm not describing obviously stable identities, they're contingent. 160 00:19:03,920 --> 00:19:11,060 They're temporary. Karris Burnett was an honourable gentleman defending a point one day the attractive young lady in a silk dress, 161 00:19:11,060 --> 00:19:16,940 the next Dorothy L. Sayers could be both an insular fellow and an intrusive hen. 162 00:19:16,940 --> 00:19:24,970 None of these options is a satisfactory resolution to the problem posed by the fact that undergraduates were assumed to be men. 163 00:19:24,970 --> 00:19:27,260 And obviously none of them created a stable, 164 00:19:27,260 --> 00:19:36,830 fully fledged version of Studentship of being a student that was compatible with also being a woman or as another member of this group put it, 165 00:19:36,830 --> 00:19:45,250 with living in the social category defined as women. But the variety and the kind of creativity of these ways of being are also worth noting. 166 00:19:45,250 --> 00:19:52,780 They remind us, for one thing, that no one is ever simply a man or a woman, masculine or feminine, for all time. 167 00:19:52,780 --> 00:19:56,560 And in all contexts. And just the same way. So if gender is kind of it. 168 00:19:56,560 --> 00:20:03,010 But, Larry, in performance, it's one whose terms can be and are varying all the time. 169 00:20:03,010 --> 00:20:10,660 And they also, I think, underscore how, despite the limitations and the sexism of the broader context, pre 1920, 170 00:20:10,660 --> 00:20:16,150 Somerville College student life also provided students with a space to try on different 171 00:20:16,150 --> 00:20:22,240 ways of being to experiment with different modes of interaction and to consider how to be, 172 00:20:22,240 --> 00:20:27,550 in the end, not just a woman or a student, but a full human being. 173 00:20:27,550 --> 00:20:29,140 Thank you.