Lasell Seminary School Correspondence Archive: 175 Letters on Women’s Education, Courtship, and Social Life, 1926–1927

Female Student Letter Archive

Archive

Large archive comprising approximately 175 handwritten and typed letters addressed to Glorian Duvall Devereux of Shelter Island, New York, during her enrollment at Lasell Seminary School (now Lasell University) in Newton, Massachusetts, in the academic years 1926–1927. Founded in 1851 as a women's seminary and established as a prominent New England finishing school, Lasell provided young women from socially established families with an education shaped by contemporary expectations concerning class, femininity, and social conduct. The correspondence comes from a geographically dispersed network of female classmates and friends and numerous male correspondents, with letters originating in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Ohio, South Carolina, and Connecticut. Taken together, the archive provides a sustained, name-level record of white upper- and middle-class youth culture in the late 1920s, documenting friendships, education, romance, mobility, social expectations, and the negotiation of gender and reputation.

The letters capture the friction between the expanding social freedoms associated with the Jazz Age and the highly regulated environment of women's education. Devereux refers to Lasell ironically as the "cemetery," a characterization echoed by correspondents who contrast her restricted routine with the greater independence associated with male collegiate life. One Amherst fraternity member describes Lasell's stated objective of producing "model and educated ladies" while recounting fraternity hazing rituals that underscore the differing expectations placed upon male and female students. Female correspondents write of returning reluctantly to school and express desires for travel, romance, independence, and a life beyond institutional supervision, while male correspondents write openly of attraction, jealousy, courtship, and possessiveness. The letters consequently document the gendered conventions governing emotional expression and social behavior: men asserting initiative and mobility, while women negotiated intimacy and personal choice within the constraints of reputation and propriety. Written only two years before the stock-market crash of 1929, the correspondence preserves the social assumptions and aspirations of a generation immediately before the economic upheaval of the Great Depression.

The archive is accompanied by two small photographs, a Valentine, business cards, and two pamphlets, providing additional material evidence of the correspondents and their social world. The letters are generally in very good or better condition, with moderate age toning, occasional small edge tears from opening, and folds and minor creasing consistent with mailing. The photographs show light silvering at the edges but retain clear images; the pamphlets have light wear at the extremities. A substantial and cohesive primary-source archive for the study of women's education, courtship, gender norms, and privileged youth culture in the United States during the final years of the 1920s.

Item #15263

Price: $750.00