Letters, Dorothy Foster (January - February 1904)

Folder 7 contains letters written by Dorothy Foster to her mother from January 7th 1904 through February 29th 1904, discussing day to day life on campus and her academic pursuits. Dorothy entertains friends, attends theatrical productions, meets with professors and alumni, and studies for exams. Researchers may find interest in Foster’s various sketches, that she uses as a means of sharing her experiences on campus with her mother. She sends her mother drawings of various subjects, such as the newly designed college crest, or an illustration from a text that she finds particularly interesting. In this way, Foster is able to meter the world through her own hand, to share her experiences by providing her own unique point of view in its conveyance in a manner that a photograph cannot replicate. However, she seems to take a negative view to her own sketches, as evidenced in letter 68, where she refuses to send her notebooks to be displayed in the St. Louis World Fair--in order to act as an example for the current status of women’s education—due to her sketches, which she sees as unprofessional and a poor example to send forth for the brilliant women at Bryn Mawr College. Nonetheless, the history of Dorothy Foster is a history of the true female college student at the turn of the 20th century as she juggles personality and professionalism in the scope of the early years of women’s college education, its gaining of notoriety, and its transformation into what it is today.