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2. A Little Leavening
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15 2 A Little Leavening W hat progress was made at Oxford after girls were refused admittance to the University Local Examinations in 1862? A second application was rejected in 1866, but in 1870, Oxford finally agreed to allow girls to participate. In 1873, the Oxford Senior Local Examination produced unexpected results. Heading the list of senior examinees was A.M.A.H. Rogers, who was promptly offered an exhibition at Worcester College, which, along with Balliol, awarded exhibitions (simi lar to scholarships) on the results of this examination. The only difficulty was that A.M.A.H. Rogers proved to be a seventeen-year-old young lady named Annie Mary Anne Henley Rogers, daughter of Thorold Rogers , a political economist at Oxford. When the list was announced, Annie Rogers received a congratulatory letter from Charlotte Green (soon to become a staunch supporter of women’s education in Oxford), who pointed out a pertinent fact: I am especially glad to remember that you did not seem at all tired by your work because it is often urged by the enemies of the higher education of women that hard work is sure to make them ill. I hope that you may keep well and continue to be a contradiction to such sayings.1 After Rogers’s gender came to light, however, Worcester withdrew its offer and embarrassedly presented her a set of books as compensation. But the door had inadvertently been opened on the issue of women at Oxford, although it was hurriedly shut in their faces and remained closed for several years to come. Fortunately, Annie Rogers did not disappear from the Oxford scene; she became a tireless (and some would say tiresome) champion of women’s education at Oxford, single-mindedly, even aggressively, devoting her life to its furtherance. 16 Her Oxford University Reform Compared to Cambridge, Oxford adopted a leisurely pace along the road toward university education for women, but reform did penetrate its misty air during the second half of the nineteenth century. Two University Reform Acts, one in 1854 and one in 1877, led to a vigorously renewed and modernized university and one more susceptible to women knocking on its closed doors. Responding to critics who maintained that Oxford was a static and outmoded institution, the prime minister, Lord John Russell, set up a royal commission in 1850 to investigate charges that the university catered only to the rich, that too much power resided with the heads of colleges, that its curriculum was outdated, that tutors did too much while professors did too little, and that patronage and religious prejudice controlled election to fellowships. Despite objections by many within the university that Oxford’s traditions would be destroyed, the commission’s work led to the University Reform Act of 1854, which corrected many of the problems just noted. A new university constitution was drawn up; the governing system was remodeled; fellowships were based on merit, not privilege, and became more open to laymen; new disciplines of study were introduced; and the professorial system was reorganized and strengthened, among other reforms. These changes were not, however, effected without howls of protest from the many conservatives entrenched behind the college walls. Commissioners made laudable progress in addressing some of the criticisms leveled at Oxford, but they did not have much success in making the university more accessible to poorer students. It did permit private homes to accommodate students who couldn’t afford to live in a college or hall (provided the homes were within a mile and a half of Carfax, the old center of Oxford where roads from the North, South, East, and West meet), but an Oxford education still came at too high a price for those with slender means. For example, a student could obtain an education at Durham University for £60 a year, while an Oxford man could expect to spend at least £150 or £160 a year. Although Keble College, founded in 1868, was established for the purpose of attracting less affluent men who were willing to live simply and economically, unlike some of the more aristocratic colleges, its students were more middle class than really poor. (Initially, a Keble education cost from £80 to £85 a year, but by the 1930s, that figure had risen to £150 a year.) In addition, even though Keble’s founding seemed to be in the spirit of reform, the college was distinctly Anglican, which meant that the traditional linkage between the Church of England and a...