Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury

Faust knew very few women who pursued higher education, and school choices were limited. However, her advisors recommended several colleges, and Faust was accepted to Bryn Mawr, one of the colleges that constituted “the female equivalent of the Ivy League” (239).

Arriving on campus in the fall of 1962, Faust and the other 198 freshmen were given a copy of the Freshman Handbook, which outlined how they “were to be ladies as well as scholars” (242). Although they had the “lenient” curfew of 2 AM, there were strict rules regarding male visitors. Many young women attending the college recognized the disadvantages they faced but didn’t yet understand how to name and challenge them. Faust’s education at Bryn Mawr “was designed to empower” her but not make female students “think about [their] social or cultural place as females” (243). Bryn Mawr accepted that “it was a man’s world” (243) but hoped to give its students “the individual strength and capacity to prevail” in a man’s arena (244).

Faust’s classes included “essentially nothing about women” (244), but she was surrounded by accomplished female professors. However, many of these women also came from elitist backgrounds. The college’s first female president, M. Carey Thomas, believed in racial hierarchies and opposed any form of integration.