Her Oxford

15. Looking Outward

229 15 Looking Outward D uring the 1920s and 1930s, the rules of social behavior that guided young men and women in Britain were more casual than before the war, and the university and colleges had to adapt to the new social mores. The authorities also had to adapt to a changed political atmosphere within the university, as students searched for ways to respond to national and international crises. Rules of Conduct When women were admitted to membership of the university in 1920, they officially came under the disciplinary control of the vice-chancellor and proctors, as had long been the case for male students.1 On matriculation , male undergraduates received a university memorandum on discipline that was based on a set of rules laid down in a 1636 statute, De Moribus Conformandis. The purpose of the statute was to prevent undergraduates from participating in activities that would annoy the citizens of Oxford and generally “to forbid conduct unworthy of members of the university.”2 In their earliest form, the rules prohibited Oxford men from, among other things, entering wine shops or tobacconists, participating in games that might cause injury or danger to others, carrying weapons, loitering in the streets, keeping animals, or visiting townspeople in their homes or shops. The rules had been modified and updated over the years but not to the extent that they addressed the subject of women students. For the first few years after women became members, university authorities did not present them with the men’s memorandum or make special regulations for them. The authorities were content for the present to leave the discipline of women students to their principals, having already approved a set of intercollegiate rules for women that were drawn up by the five principals around the time of admittance. Designed to keep women students on a short leash now that they were members of the larger university community, the rules dictated that no woman student was ever to be alone with a man other than her brother, either inside or outside her college. She was not encouraged to hold conversations with male stu- 230 Her Oxford dents before or after lectures and had to secure a chaperone for mixed-sex parties in restaurants and cafés. If a woman student wanted to join male undergraduates in a university club or society, she was required to get permission from her principal and to be accompanied by a chaperone. These intercollegiate regulations struck many Oxford students, male and female, as archaic and unnecessarily prohibitive, particularly in 1920s Britain. All over the country there had been a general relaxation of the old rules of correct conduct for young men and women, and the sexes casually intermingled in ways that would have been considered improper before 1914. Dance halls (a craze for dancing swept Britain in the twenties), caf és, cinemas, motorcycles, automobiles, unsegregated workplaces, and a general feeling of “eat, drink, and be merry” all contributed to breaking down barriers between men and women. Yet, despite grumbling about the rules that inhibited contact between them, male and female students at Oxford seemed hesitant about getting to know each other socially. They had occupied separate spheres for so long that they did not know how to join their two worlds. Many male students were inclined to keep Oxford women at arm’s length, unsure whether they wanted to share their university with them. Several things may have contributed to their standoffish attitude. Quite a few Oxford men had had little experience with women, particularly in an academic setting, and were not sure what was expected of them in this arena. Also, many had been instilled with a belief in the value of an all-male collegiate society, where the opportunity to cultivate friendships in an informal and relaxed atmosphere was often considered as crucial to the Oxford experience as a good education. Even for men inclined to seek out contact with women students, the atmosphere within the women’s colleges could appear unwelcoming and forbidding. A St. Hugh’s student remembered the “daunting formality” with which a male friend had to contend when he called on her in college and maintained that their friendship was nipped in the bud by the frosty reception.3 Women students were probably more enthusiastic than men during the early 1920s about moving beyond the self-sufficient lives they had led in their own colleges. They wanted to participate more fully in the life of the university—an opportunity...