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Introduction
Oberlin College was one of
the few coeducational and racially integrated colleges in antebellum
America. Although their public speaking was sometimes limited, female
students participated in most facets of college life. At Oberlin and
beyond, female students (and their male counterparts) worked to construct
a racially integrated environment, to end slavery and, after emancipation,
to aid former slaves. At Oberlin and in their lives afterwards, female
students sought to define the parameters of female life and to participate
in a variety of antebellum social movements.
Objectives
- To explore how the Second
Great Awakening and religion were intertwined with women's work in
moral reform
- To describe the education women received at Oberlin and to describe
some of the outcomes of this education
- To examine how women worked for racial harmony during and after
Oberlin
- To examine how women defined the parameters of female experience
in their lives at Oberlin and beyond
- To assess the ways in which education and moral reform work reinforced
traditional ideas about (and restraints upon) women as well as to
see how they broadened women's opportunities and challenged the boundaries
of the female sphere
Teaching
Ideas
Read document
1. What do you learn about the Female Society in Colchester--particularly
its goals and operations? What seems to motivate Rudd to participate?
Now read documents
6A and 6B.
Are there comparisons that can be made? What change over time do you
observe in the Oberlin Female Moral Reform Society?
Documents
3 and 4
reveal some motivating factors that brought women to Oberlin and provide
descriptions of some of their experiences there. Read document
3. How does Sally Rudd encourage her niece to come to Oberlin? What
about the religious motivations of Hannah Maria Warner? What do you
learn from these letters about everyday life and education at Oberlin?
Be prepared to discuss this in class.
Carefully read documents
5A, 5B,
and 5C,
all essays written by Oberlin student Mary Sheldon. What does Sheldon
think of women's ability to influence the world? Compare what you read
in these documents to what you find in document
7, an address that Sheldon later gave.
Read
document 8, the bylaws of the Young Ladies Literary Society (YLLS),
and
document 15, and address by student Frances Hazen that was prepared
in consultation with the YLLS. Briefly summarize the bylaws. Were any
of the rules suprising to you? If so, which ones and why? How does Frances
Hazen argue for women's place in history? Based on these documents,
assess what opportunities participation in this Society provided to
Oberlin women. Are there opportunities that the Society did not
provide? Be prepared to discuss these matters in class.
Read documents
9A,
9B, and
9C. What is being described in these letters? Who is paying for
Mary and Emily's education at Oberlin, and why? What happened to Mary?
How did Oberlin affect Emily?
Read documents 10,
11A,
11B,
11C,
and 12A.
What do these documents reveal about the racially integrated education
and environment of Oberlin? What tensions existed, and how did students
work to overcome such tensions? After they left Oberlin, how did Oberlin
women work for racial justice? Do you see indications that there were
links between their ideas about gender and race? Be prepared to discuss
these questions in class and to point to specific passages in the documents
that support your ideas.
In her work at Oberlin, Emily Pillsbury Burke found herself enmeshed
in controversy. Read documents 13A,
and 13B.
Describe the controversy. How did her dismissal affect Burke, and what
does it demonstrate about the importance of female reputation in the
nineteenth century?
Read documents 14,
15,
16,
and 17.
How did Oberlin women use public speaking to make their own case? Pay
particular attention to document 17,
the commencement exercises from 1861. What topics did women typically
speak about, and what do their choices tell you?
In considering all of these documents, assess how Oberlin education
and moral reform work reinforced traditional ideas about women. In addition,
how did it challenge the boundaries of the female sphere? Be prepared
to discuss these opposing perspectives in class.
Possible Assignments
- Choose 4-6 documents from
this project and use them to make a case for Oberlin education as
(a) liberating for women OR (b) reinforcing society's stereotypes
about women. (Or, instead of writing a paper, have an in-class debate
about the issues.)
- Research Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, two of Oberlin's
most famous students and lifelong friends. Read the letters that they
wrote to each other, reprinted in Carol Lasser and Marlene Deahl Merrill,
Friends and Sisters: Letters Between Lucy Stone and Antoinette
Brown Blackwell, 1846-93 (University of Illinois Press, 1987).
What do you learn about the Oberlin experience and these two reformers
from this correspondence? How did Stone and Blackwell struggle to
overcome the limitations they felt were placed on women, at Oberlin
and beyond?
For Further Investigation
Bonnie Laughlin Schultz
Indiana University
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