Ohio History Journal

LORI D. GINZBERG

Women in an Evangelical Community:

Oberlin 1835-1850

 

 

Women and men joined the first coeducational college in order

to create both a model Christian community and trained missionaries

for the world's enlightenment and regeneration.' Oberlin College was

not a "feminist" experiment, for the concept of feminism did not truly

exist. It was an evangelical project, in which women were an integral

part. An understanding of why certain women came to Oberlin and

what they found there may illuminate the ways women found to satisfy

the demands placed upon them. It is not useful to merely take signs of

protest as evidence of change in their lives; change was far more subtle,

and women's experience more complex and interesting, than measures

of "oppression" indicate. Religion and commitment to community

were the central focuses in many women's lives, and thus they must

assume their proper place in the historical study of American women.²

The interest in Oberlin as a college obscures its significance as a

religious community. It is in this latter regard that one gains the most

insight into women's participation. Oberlin's founders set out for the

frontier in 1833 to create a model society, one that would demonstrate

true Christian living to what they termed the "perishing world." Women

 

 

Lori D. Ginzberg is a graduate student in history at Yale University.

 

1. Oberlin College is frequently mentioned in connection with women's education

and their struggle for emancipation. Discussions seek to demonstrate that Oberlin is

either to be praised for being in the vanguard on these issues or condemned for

hypocrisy. The concept of religious faith has not been given a central role. Robert

Fletcher pointed out Oberlin's positive influence on later decisions to educate

women alongside men and saw "joint education" as a significant step in America's

progress toward sexual equality: Robert Samuel Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College

From Its Foundation Through the Civil War, Vol 1 (Oberlin, 1943), 904-09. Recent

"feminist" writers emphasize Oberlin's double standard and the "masculine priorities"

with which the experiment was implemented. See Ronald W. Hogeland, "Coeducation

of the Sexes at Oberlin College: A Study of Social Ideas in Mid-Nineteenth Century

America," Journal of Social History, VI (Fall, 1972), 160-71, and Jill Conway,

"Perspective on the History of Women's Education in the United States," History

of Education Quarterly, XIV (Spring, 1974), 1-12.

2. I object to the view that the clergy somehow manipulated women into joining

churches out of self-interest. This ignores the centrality of belief in women's lives,

which was a source of strength as well as of dependence. See Ann Douglas, The

Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977).

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Evangelical Community                                          79

 

were central to this vision. More significant and unique than secular

education was Oberlin's manner of applying its ideology to all aspects

of community life. Oberlin affected women's lives as much by their

participation and role in a cohesive community as by purely intellectual,

or academic experiences. This community serves as an example of the

ways in which one group of women synthesized in their own lives

the conflicting theories regarding their roles and duties in American

society.

Scholarship on women views the early nineteenth century as a time

in which roles and expectations were transformed and articulated. Gerda

Lerner attributes the deterioration of women's status-from the colonial

period through the 1840s-to the separation of workplace and home and

the resulting ambiguity concerning women's contributions to society.

She claims that women did not share in the egalitarian ideology's

benefits or aspirations.³ There was a growing idealization of the lady,

who represented, in Barbara Welter's phrase, "piety, purity, submissive-

ness and domesticity."⁴ The cult of domesticity, and of woman's

purifying power, was articulated most cogently by Catharine Beecher,

and was central to the ideas of ladies' seminaries, guides to women

teachers, and religious tracts.⁵ It is tempting to regard the relegation

of women to a limited sphere as a loss of social status, and the

glorification of that sphere as an apology for its constraints. Status,

however, is a difficult thing to measure. The pioneers of women's

education, and the women themselves, aspired to no less than purifying

a changing nation through women's moral influence as wife, mother,

and, increasingly throughout this period, teacher. Woman, they be-

lieved, would use her moral superiority for the benefit of all.

The ideal of the morally superior woman coincided with a theory of

rights. The first feminists claimed "human rights," which they equated

with political, legal, and economic equality with men. Women's involve-

ment in movements for temperance, moral reform, abolition and, later,

women's rights, was unprecedented, both in number and influence.

The famous correspondence between Sarah and Angelina Grimke, who

took the human rights position, and Catharine Beecher, seems to

exemplify the irreconciliable intellectual differences concerning women's

role and their potential to change society.⁶

 

3. Gerda Lerner, "The Lady and the Mill Girl," Mid-Continental American States

Journal, IV (1969), 5-12.

4. Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1800-1860," in Dimity

Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens, Ohio, 1976), 21-41.

5. Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity

(New York, 1976).

6. Sklar, Catharine Beecher, 132-37.

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80                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

Yet it is best to view these two theories as opposite sides of the same

problem, for a clear-cut dichotomy of thought is impossible when

applied to action. Beecher's extension of women's moral sphere to

teaching, in effect, extended it right out of the home and into public

conflict, exactly what she disdained in theory. In contrast, many of

the most noted feminists, in crying for a woman's "right" to involve

herself in a non-traditional sphere, used, and believed, the vocabulary

of moral purification to justify their position. The Grimkes claimed that

women should assert themselves alongside, but morally superior to,

men in the political realm. Beecher, disturbed by the influence of

corrupt politics on a morally-reprehensible society, chose to expand

women's traditional role to create a "national ethic of domestic virtue."⁷

Oberlin embodied in microcosm one solution to the conflicts

presented by the Grimkes and Beecher and, in turn, demonstrated the

paradoxes involved. Oberlin had a cohesive ideology and sought to

train "a band of self-denying, hardy, intelligent, efficient laborers, of

both sexes, for the world's enlightenment and regeneration."⁸ Knowl-

edge of the long-term effects of coeducation on women's "sphere"

should not obscure the founders' intentions: these women and men had

no pretensions to giving women equality in the masculine realm, for

they did not approve of this domain for any of its members. Even as

the dominant American values increasingly emphasized individual

advancement, the Oberlin community sought traditional Christian

virtues. The founders relied upon moral superiority, personal sub-

mission, and individual perfection in transforming an increasingly

complex society. Oberlin's members applied to a frontier society the

logical extremes of Beecher's female virtues. They believed that the

moralistic, domestic approach to reform would be far more effective

in purifying the world than would institutional arrangements for

change. Consistent with the long-standing American zeal for a utopian

society, they chose perfection over compromise.

Religion formed the basis of life at Oberlin. One is struck by the

homogeneity of thought and feeling in the early years. Fletcher notes,

"The seriousmindedness of early Oberlin is appalling. The consciousness

of a wicked world and an approaching day of atonement clouded the

spirits of students and teachers. Life was a serious business and death

was momentarily awaited.^"9 The founders were deeply committed

members of Congregational and Presbyterian churches. Their heresy

 

7. Sklar, Catharine Beecher, 135.

8. "Prudential Report," Oberlin Evangelist, 3 December 1851.

9. Fletcher, History of Oberlin College, 24. For a more detailed discussion of

Oberlin theology, see James Fairchild, The Doctrine of Sanctification at Oberlin (Oberlin

and Boston, 1856).

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Evangelical Community                                              81

 

lay in their fervent insistence on compulsory moral action as part of

post-Calvinist doctrine. The most significant, if gradual, shift from

orthodox Puritanism was in the interpretation of sin and human will.

Original sin and individual election to salvation were increasingly at

odds with the peculiarly American doctrine of individual opportunity

and achievement of status. The new theology inadvertantly rationalized

and expounded this capitalist ethic. According to Barbara Zikmund,

it "emphasized man's freedom and the use of that freedom to improve

the human situation."¹⁰ It replaced the concept of "sin" with that of

"sinning."

Sin increasingly became a positive, voluntary, and individual act.

Society, a mere collection of individuals, was evil or pure directly

because of human behavior. This implies potential sinlessness. Helen

Cowles was "led to wonder how the Lord can spare the people of

the United States, when they are such a nation of hard-hearted sinners. "

However, as Whitney Cross notes, "The dogma of American democ-

racy, vigourously rising in Jacksonian days, contained a supreme

optimism, a belief in the ultimate perfection of society through

progressive improvement in humankind."¹¹ This deep optimism explains

the vigor with which evangelicals strove for social perfection, which

they believed was possible, if not inevitable, through their efforts at

molding individuals.

Women, Cross believed, should dominate a history of revivalism.

Similar conditions of status and expectation existed for women in all

parts of the United States. It was in western New York, however,

where the most intense period of religious revivalism occurred, that

Oberlin and its ideology originated. In contrast to this area, the

western frontier provided women with a life of too little leisure

and too much drudgery to inspire so much religious energy. In the

East, religion rarely served as a fulltime occupation; if there was not

more "status" in the larger cities, at least there were more non-religious

activities to fill women's days. "Woman," Cross stated, "made a

nearly exclusive avocation of religion. . . . Perhaps only in the middle

stretch of just-matured society, and within the belt of Yankee migration,

could she attain the maximum concentration upon this one type of

expression. Unconscious desires found outlet in revivals and in the

busy campaigns for reforming crusades." 12 Harriet Martineau, starting

10. Barbara Zikmund, "Asa Mahan and Oberlin Perfectionism" (unpub. Ph.D.

thesis, Duke University, 1969), 16.

11. Helen M. Cowles, journal entry, 17 May 1849, Grace Victorious, Oberlin College

Special Collections (OCSC), Mudd Learning Center, Oberlin, OH; Whitney Cross,

The Burned-Over District (New York, 1965), 199.

12. Cross, Burned-Over District, 89. He discusses women's role in revivalist religion

on pages 84-90.

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82                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

her two-year tour of the United States in 1834, remarked, "The

way in which religion is made an occupation by women, testifies

not only to the vacuity which must exist . . .but to the vigour with

which the religious sentiment would probably be carried into the great

objects and occupations of life, if such were permitted."¹³ Anxious

to save society, Oberlin's founders implicitly recognized this potential

energy.

Oberlin's particular doctrine was, above all, one of moral action.

Belief and human will were synthesized in the Scriptural verse, "Show

me thy faith without thy works/And I will show thee my faith by

my works."¹⁴ A dissatisfaction with the world, an intense desire for

a cohesive community, and a faith in their ability to perfect society

by persuasion distinguished its members. They perceived themselves

not as escapists from a changing society, but as activists bent on

demonstrating a model for that society's instruction. All agreed that

individual action lay at the root of social evil, and all members

committed themselves to converting the world and recreating it in

Oberlin's image.

Women at Oberlin believed in perfectionism as devoutly as did

men, sharing equally painful conversion experiences and senses of

religious inadequacy. Girlhood was directly associated with the "em-

brace of piety with qualities of submission and humility."15   They

tried to submit to God's will and urged others to do the same. It is

far too simple to adopt the view that religion blinded women to

their social positions or to doubt the authenticity of beliefs that

made certain options available to them. Religion provided the sphere

through which women expressed both frustration and the desire to

perpetuate the values of family and community. Nineteenth century

"feminized" religion called upon women to act, to exert themselves

as morally superior agents in a sinful world. Traditional Christian

virtues formed the basis of a theology of social activism; women,

as the embodiment of these virtues, were compelled to demonstrate

its viability.

James Fairchild's two arguments in support of coeducation were

that women should be educated as human beings, and that they would

be a "civilizing influence" on men in public life. If female virtues

were to change the world, a society had to be created in which their

moral influence would be strong. Oberlin was to be that society.

Attributes that capitalist America associated with female weakness

13. Harriet Martineau, Society in America, abr., ed. by Seymour Martin Lipset

(Garden City, N.Y., 1962), 342.

14. James 2:18.

15. Joseph Kett, Rites of Passage (New York, 1977), 75.

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Evangelical Community                                     83

were aspired to by Oberlin men as well. One's place in the world and in God's eyes was not predetermined but earned through denouncing sin. Similarly, the world itself was not doomed, but was to be saved by human effort. "Equality" was an irrelevant concept, as all people who strove for sanctification were equally submissive to God. Assertion of "right" on earth would involve ego and material needs which were seen as corrupting. Women, it was believed, were not subject to such desires. The concept of woman as a civilizing influence did not mean that women were brought in to Oberlin on a pretext of superiority to "serve" men, do laundry, or become wives. They came, as did the men, to fulfill a moral mission. Without women, Oberlin would have been simply another college. With women, it completed its primary function-the creation of a good society that would show the world the harmony and virtue of Christian living. In its economic, social, and labor relations, the Oberlin community represented a society based on familial functions, with women at its moral center extending their influence through the community to the outside world. The emphasis on an isolated, close-knit community places Oberlin within the general movement for utopian societies in the 1830s, created, like others, by the interplay of social change and social

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optimism.16 The sense of closeness came more from shared values

than from a long-term proximity on the part of its members. Nancy

Prudden, upon arriving in Oberlin in 1837, remarked, "The sisters

all seem to love one another and of course are happy." Ann Gillett

recalled that, at Oberlin, "All is peace, love, harmony and good will."17

This sense of closeness existed even though many students spent only

brief periods of time there. The student body fluctuated considerably.

Ann Harris returned to Oberlin in 1843 after a visit home to find few

familiar faces. "I feel almost like a stranger here," she wrote. 18

The bond between Oberlin students was one of shared values of

community life. The ladies in the Boarding House lived in close

and frequently crowded conditions, sharing classes, recitations, prayer

and society meetings, meals, and domestic chores. The homogeneity

and fervor of their beliefs, as well as the common bond of economic

difficulties, made Oberlin much more than a college, and its influence

extended well beyond the period they actually attended.

Oberlin, then, was a utopian community that included an educational

institution. Its founders, however, were not committed to women's

education as an abstract right, but as a means of social perfection.

According to Frances Hosford, Oberlin's "many new departures have

never been upheavals or changes for the sake of something new. They

have sprung from the efforts of earnest men to be loyal to the right

as they saw it."¹⁹ There was little debate surrounding the decision

to include women, and less awareness of the storm of protest that

would follow. The founders emphasized a religious community of

which women were to be as much a part as men: they served as models

of virtue, and were therefore a necessary part of a virtuous model

society. The supposedly radical innovation of joint education of men

and women was lost upon Oberlin's founders.

The participants in the experiment believed that it worked. In

1836, the faculty and trustees of the college met to discuss the merits

of joint education. They reported that the mental influence was

mutually beneficial, that it cultivated "mind and manners, promotes

real virtue, and corrects frivolities, irregularities, and follies common to

youth." They concluded that "no serious evil and much good" resulted

 

 

 

16. Daniel Rohrer, "Young Ladies Literary Society of Oberlin College: 1835-1860"

(unpub. A.M. thesis, Univ. of Wisconsin, 1969), 101.

17. Nancy Prudden to George Prudden, 15 May 1837, Fletcher Collection, Box 11,

Oberlin College Archives (OCA); Ann Elisa Gillett to Charlotte Fenner, 5 January 1838,

Fletcher Collection, Box 7.

18. Ann Harris to Laura Branch, 27 April 1843, Fletcher Collection, Box 7.

19. Frances J. Hosford, Father Shipherd's Magna Charta (Boston, 1937), 6.

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Evangelical Community                                 85

from the association of the sexes, which was the true basis of human society. 20 As women's social responsibility expanded, discussions arose as to their proper sphere. In 1838, Professor John Morgan delivered a speech in which he declared that as long as individuals felt dissatisfied with their sphere, they could not fulfill their responsibilities. Women should recognize the female role not as degraded but as a noble calling.21 The women to whom he spoke agreed in theory. Men and women shared the assumption that women would remain in their sphere once they had experienced college. They were to exert moral influence not only within the limits of the family, but upon social activity. Moreover, this activism was a calling, a necessary part of women's duties. In 1836, forty-three young women were asked to record, among other personal facts, their future intentions. The plans of those who responded are illuminating. Nine women simply wrote "teach," with Jane Strong adding "and translate Scriptures." Ten women planned to be a "missionary" or "home missionary," often adding "if the Lord wills" or "where God in His Providence directs." Five other women   20. Minutes of the Board of Trustees, Oberlin College, 9 March 1836. 21. James Fairchild to Mary Kellogg, 19 March 1838, Where Liberty Dwells, OCSC.

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86                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

specifically wished to be "foreign missionaries," while three others

planned either to teach or perform missionary work. Catharine

Gillett "hope[d] to become qualified for instructing the ignorant,"

and nine other women intended to "prepare for whatever station the

Lord directs" or labor in "some sphere of Christian usefulness."²²

Clearly, these women joined men in believing that they followed a

calling to be useful in the religious education of others.

Marriage and family, like all other aspects of life, fit into the

larger scheme of evangelical activism. The family was the focal point

of female virtues and influence, "the one morally reliable institution

in a fluid and diverse society."²³ Marriage was a given, the family

the model from which women's influence would be implemented in

the larger society.

The joint education of women and men, given the moral and

physical seclusion of the community, resulted in an extraordinary

number of marriages among Oberlin graduates. Between 1837 and

1846, 97.5 percent of Oberlin's women graduates married, and 65

percent of these married Oberlin men.²⁴ Others married ministers and

theologically-trained teachers who shared their beliefs. This pattern

continued until the late 1840s, when fewer men pursued seminary

training and complexities of belief arose. The close interaction of

college life, even under strict supervision, provided a common basis

on which to build families. Further, the common life-style was in

opposition to the norm, making the experiment more seclusive and

in turn bringing participants together. It was not necessary to place

conscious emphasis on marriage as a goal for women; rather, it was a

base from which women and men would act. Marriage and family

were usable institutions, not ends in themselves.

Although affection and respect are evident throughout the corre-

spondence of Oberlin couples, marriages were intended primarily for

sharing Christian labor. James Fairchild, evaluating a prospective

career in Michigan, wrote, "There is not as much opportunity here

[in Oberlin] for women to exert an influence, except in their own

families."²⁵ Circumstances finally led him to remain at Oberlin, but

many Oberlin women did go west with their husbands. Perhaps

frontier life appealed to women who were prepared for its rigors by

a religious and social commitment. Frequently they set up Christian

 

22. The original copies of these autobiographical statements are in the Oberlin

College Archives.

23. Ronald Walters, The Antislavery Appeal (Baltimore, 1976), 94.

24. Louis Hartson, "Marriage Record of Alumnae for the First Century of a

Coeducational College," The Journal of Heredity, XXXI, (Sept., 1940), 406.

25. Fairchild to Kellogg, 8 February 1841, Where Liberty Dwells.

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Evangelical Community                                       87

 

schools, accordingly structured around female and domestic values, as

well as the goals of missionary work and religious education. Thus

Oberlin women and men sought to continue their community after

graduation. They left a relatively secure environment for the greater

mission of regenerating the evil world.

By the 1850s, Oberlin itself had changed. The years 1835 to 1850

were "the years of 'peculiar' Oberlin. ... But the transition...

began early," says Fletcher. "The period after 1850 was marked by

a combination of fulfillment and conformity which . . . had translated

Oberlin from  its unique status."²⁶ With the decline of religious

intensity, there was a marked trend toward secularism following 1850,

coincident with the retirement of Asa Mahan as president as well as

with outside pressures toward conformity with the practices of other

colleges and communities. These practices included increased (and

increasingly heterogeneous) enrollment, an endowment, and a more

general acceptance of previously bizarre "Oberlinisms." In particular,

the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) and Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) made

the "hotbed of abolitionism"²⁷ more respectable in the North; the

beginning of a women's rights movement made "joint education"

more acceptable; and the trend toward worldliness on the part of a

drained revivalist movement made Oberlin much like other schools.

Oberlin members were never really able to reconcile their self-

imposed separation from American society with the desire to correct

their country's sinful behavior. Antipathetic to the evils of an

individualistic society, they nevertheless tried to create, or regain, a

community by individual means. This required a fervor whose moral

absolutism had shifted focus by the 1850s. Increasingly, men at

Oberlin conformed to American social and political norms, which

included more worldly-or political-activity, particularly regarding

the abolition of slavery. The Christian sphere became more specifically

woman's, and, through the nineteenth century, hers was the responsi-

bility to preserve, by nonpolitical means, the family and the com-

munity.

Sarah and Angelina Grimke wished to extend democracy's supposed

benefits to women. America, they believed, was not intended to be a

hierarchical society, and infringements of political or legal "rights"

were inconsistent with accepted values. Catharine Beecher, in contrast,

recognized and valued the hierarchy within American society and

structured a social role for women that depended upon its continuance.

She acknowledged that men had been given a role superior to women,

 

26. Fletcher, History of Oberlin College, 886.

27. Ibid., 236.

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but insisted that women's social responsibility was as necessary a part

of societal change as men's. The characters of the two sexes should

be recognized and clearly differentiated,and both should be instructed

as to their functions in the well-ordered society.28

Throughout the nineteenth century, Beecher's ideology and methods

were the more successful, "possibly because [she] prescribed less

dramatic cultural changes, spoke to real American anxieties about

the pace of change, and introduced important stabilizing factors into

the national ideology."²⁹ In addition, she spoke to the religious belief

of American women, exposing the gap between traditional Christian

virtues and modernizing America. As emphasized earlier, her ideology

was inseparable from her practice, which was to educate women to

teach and exert an influence in society. That influence was "conserva-

tive" in that its ideal was a cohesive society based on a familial

pattern. It conflicted sharply with the dominant values of the

"masculine" world, which glorified democracy, "progress," and

growth. The price of men's activity in their realm seemed to be the

dislocation of a close-knit society. Women, the "bearers of culture,"

were not to err, as had men, in their involvement with industrial

society; rather, they were to purify it. Women perpetuated the

submergence of self- for community-interest that characterized the

early Oberlin community. Oberlin's members, in a fervent, if brief,

effort to employ these values in saving the world, expected both

women and men to minimize personal interest in the greater interest

of family, or community, cohesiveness and stability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28. Sklar, Catharine Beecher, 132-37.

29. Ibid., 137.

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