Do women’s colleges have a long-standing and uneasy relationship with questions of female sexuality?
Dr Alex da Costa, Valerie Eliot Fellow in English and Director of Studies in English at Newnham College, explains why she has launched a project to explore the experiences of former students of women’s colleges to mark LGBT History Month.
Looking at early photos of Newnham women shortly after I arrived as a Fellow in 2013 I had an uncanny sense of recognition. Dressed in my usual butch fashion, I stared into an exhibition case and looked at late Victorian women in blouses and skirts. A few had abandoned pussy bows around their collars for ties. I wondered whether that choice had any significance for them beyond the sartorial, whether it said anything about whom they desired?
Having come from St Hilda’s College in Oxford – called the ‘Virgin Megastore’ by some boorish men – it made me think about the ways in which women’s colleges have a long-standing and uneasy relationship with questions of female sexuality. In the earliest days, colleges like Newnham needed to reassure parents that they were not seeking to subvert their daughters’ interest in marriage by making incorrigible bluestockings of them or – as greater suspicion fell on female friendship as the 20th century progressed – by fostering overly close relationships between women.
The Homerton archivist, Elizabeth Edwards, has argued that ‘inside the confines of women’s colleges, homoerotic friendship was accepted within certain limits – namely that the friendship remained invisible to the outside world, and that the women concerned did not violate standards of respectability by indiscreet behaviour.’ Perhaps the legacy of those early anxieties is still evident today when prospective Newnham students are given reassurances that they will meet men.
There is an unconscious tendency to ignore the fact that some women choose women’s colleges for reasons other than, or at least in addition to, the desire for a supportive female community of brilliant scholars. This is in part supported by the ways in which unintentional absences in the college archives obscure the importance that relationships with women have had to the personal and scholarly lives of some Newnham women.
Consequently, taking inspiration from Elizabeth Edwards research at Homerton in the 1990s and as part of LGBT history month, I’m launching a project to recover this part of Newnham’s history and would like to invite alumnae who identify as LGBT+ to share their memories. The aim of the project is to create an archive of experiences both positive and negative of what it was like to be lesbian, bisexual or trans* while a student at Newnham.
I’m particularly interested in capturing the memories of alumnae who were at Newnham before it became more permissible to be ‘out’. I hope to put on an exhibition based on submissions in February 2018 accompanied by a talk.
In Michaelmas, I spoke to current Newnham LGBT+ students about this proposed project and asked them what value they saw in it. One thing that emerged is how transitory their student community can feel. Its members are constantly leaving as they end their degrees and so its vitality depends on the energy of the current JCR LGBT+ rep, who also changes annually. They said that a project like this would help to create a sense of continuity and community that goes beyond their years here.
As a couple of students remarked, they are thrilled whenever they encounter LGBT+ alumnae as it reassures them and inspires them about their own futures.
If you would like to contribute to this project please write to, or email, Dr Alex da Costa (ad666@cam.ac.uk).