7. Faculty voice: Mary Wilder, Well-Behaved Women Mercer Reader p. 161 - 168

As I was reading the excerpt from the old women's handbook, I was struck by two things. First, how unfair it was that these girls were expected to live by these rules, when I'm sure that their male counterparts would have much less restrictions placed on them. Second, it was apparent through the beginning of the text when they talked about privileges and "freedom of life in a large group", that the the people who wrote this genuinely believed that they were offering the female students more freedom than was necessary. I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like to live in a time period like that, where it was normal and expected for women to be under more restrictions than men, and for them to show "ladylike behavior" and accept their restrictions. I'm also currently living in Boone Hall, which is part of the M.E.P, which was referred to in the text. This made the stark differences in our situations even more apparent, because the women who lived where I'm currently living in 1950 had a much different set of rules and expectations than what I currently do. It made me think of how society has been able to progress so much to the point where I, as a female student, can read this and think of it as nearly almost other worldly.