College Girls: A Book that You Must Indulge In

Did my law degree and my Bachelor's in History ruin my chance for an M.R.S. degree? Will a college education and a profession impair a woman's ability to have children or minimize her chances of securing a husband and getting married? If an education is appropriate for women, is a classic curriculum where she learns Greek, Latin and prepares for a career appropriate or should that curriculum prepare her for her role as a mother and homemaker? If education is appropriate, what role does the college assume in her development: in loco parentis or laissez faire? Does the college assume the rule of her parents or does the college take laissez faire approach to women's development in college? Perhaps the most important question that is dissected is whether college educated women make better wives than those who do not go to college. Lynn Peril attempts to answer these questions while taking a comprehensive look at the history of education of women in College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens and Coeds Then and Now, published in 2006 by W.W. Norton and Company.

This book was filled with a lot of facts and history surrounding women's colleges, seminaries and finishing schools. As someone who went to one of the few remaining single-sex Seven Sisters colleges still in existence, I had been drawn to this book and the history provided was interesting, thought-provoking and entertaining. Peril provided an in-depth look at the history of the development of those women's colleges. Peril was witty in her discussions of the sociological studies that were used to justify how the curriculum for young women was developed and she deftly wove her own, personal anecdotes into the narrative. Sprinkled throughout the book were pictures of the young coeds and bluestockings, along with newspaper articles and advertisements and other popular culture memorabilia that depicted how the generations viewed these new breeds of women.

I was disappointed in one thing. Peril, while she did a lot of good, solid research on the history of women and higher education, did not discuss the modern women in education in any depth at all. There was a single, brief chapter at the end of the book that did not graze the surface at all in regards to the challenges that modern women face on contemporary college campuses, regardless of whether they attend a coeducational institute or a single sex institution. There was so much more that could have been done to bring the discussion into the modern realm.

All in all though, this was a well-written, well-researched and accessible book that anyone could and should read.