ePub Archaic Roman Religion by Professor Georges Dumézil in History

Description

Toward the end of the nineteenth century; as young women began entering college in greater numbers than ever before; physicians and social critics charged that campus life posed grave hazards to the female constitution and women's reproductive health. "A girl could study and learn;" Dr. Edward Clarke warned in his widely read 1873 book Sex in Education; "but she could not do all this and retain uninjured health; and a future secure from neuralgia; uterine disease; hysteria; and other derangements of the nervous system." For half a century; ideas such as Dr. Clarke's framed the debate over a woman's place in higher education almost exclusively in terms of her body and her health.For historian Margaret A. Lowe; this obsession offers one of the clearest expressions of the social and cultural meanings given to the female body between 1875 and 1930. At the same time; the "college girl" was a novelty that tested new ideas about feminine beauty; sexuality; and athleticism. In Looking Good; Lowe examines the ways in which college women at three quite different institutions―Cornell University; Smith College; and Spelman College―regarded their own bodies in this period. Contrasting white and black students; single-sex and coeducational schools; secular and religious environments; and Northern and Southern attitudes; Lowe draws on student diaries; letters; and publications; institutional records; and accounts in the popular press to examine the process by which new; twentieth-century ideals of the female body took hold in America.