“PLAIN” GIRLS SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE (1911)
Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes.
The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
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It’s tough being plain.
But if you go to college you increase your chances of getting that “MRS” degree.
So said Brooklynite Imogene Kelly who, while in her senior year at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, was editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, Wellesley College News. The top scribe’s job gave the sensible young lady ample opportunity to place her thoughts before her adoring public.
After her piece about the necessity of homely girls attending college to increase their chances of marital bliss, though, Kelly hadn’t much of an audience at all.
WHY GIRLS GO TO COLLEGE
In an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Kelly was showcased for her viewed of the necessity of a college education.
“The unattractive girl, in order to equalize her chances for a husband with the less plain girl, must do so by getting an education,” Kelly reported. “The girl who is attractive and good looking need not secure a college training in order to fulfill her marriage destiny.”
Kelly’s story, though, earned her an audience far beyond the campus of Wellesley, as it was picked up by a number of news services and printed in many places around the country.
“The girls at Wellesley, as a rule, are not beautiful, and for that reason these girls must educate themselves for the time when they will go out into the world and be obliged to support themselves. If they were more attractive they would be married or engaged, and there would be less pressing need for a college education for them.”
“…the majority of college girls possess that quality of looks which warns them that it is better to prepare for future self-support than to depend on their chances of marrying.”
Since her graduation she had devoted her time to settlement and literary work.
But in the end, Kelly’s education must have given her that edge that she needed, for, three years later, she received her life’s MRS degree, becoming the bride of a Wall Street bond dealer, Charles Augustus Reynolds.
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