In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

306 CODES
the same rights and should be entitled to choose their social and professional
situations independently of their sex. It is not ideologically motivated
objections but procedural problems and institutional inertia that
prevent this ideal from becoming a reality. For example, the constitution
of Mount Holyoke, a women's college in Massachusetts, defines the
school's "purpose" without any gender-specific restrictions: "The object
of the Mount Holyoke College Community shall be to provide an allinclusive
organization through which . . . to furnish those conditions
which shall best contribute to the spiritual, intellectual, and physical
welfare of its members; to foster an intelligent interest in all phases of
college citizenship; and by maintaining a government as nearly as possible
like that in the world outside, to prepare its members for assuming
the duties of active citizenship in their respective political communities"
(Handbook, 7). No other achievements of Mount Holyoke alumnae are
cited as proudly as their activities in the-predominantly male-world
of the sciences. "Anti-toxin, which stopped the spread of tetanus in our
army overseas, was prepared at the Mulford Laboratory by thirteen
Mount Holyoke-trained scientists. That was one time when thirteen was
a lucky number for the army ... A Mount Holyoke woman was a
bacteriologist with the Near East relief expedition ... Mount Holyoketrained
scientists serve in the research laboratories of the country's basic
industries" (Catalogue, passim). Despite this commitment to gender
equality, student life is regulated with a severity that would be ridiculous
at any men's college. There are complex rules regarding the conditions
under which the young women are allowed to ride in a car [see Automobiles],
or to walk and hike even in the vicinity of the school ("Students
shall not walk in the evening around Upper Lake in groups of less than
six, nor with men unless there are at least two couples"; Handbook, 28).
Even the students' fathers are subject to the gender-based rigor of these
rules: "A student wishing to take her father to her room may do so by
securing the permission of the superintendent of the house" (40). The
institutional ambivalence that is apparent in the way Mount Holyoke
organizes its student's lives (a regime that is partly based on religious
principles) is not so different from the individual ambivalence with
which the German journalist and ex-revolutionary Ernst Toller reacts to
women's new lifestyles in the Soviet Union. When it comes to general
ideological statements, Toller is of course eager to appear as an enthusiastic
advocate of equal rights between the sexes. Whenever he discusses