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Springfield, Ohio — In 1929, Virginia Woolf would argue in her most famous essay that a woman of her time who possessed Shakespeare's talent would be barred by social and practical obstacles from having the time and resources needed to write like the Bard.

A full 55 years earlier, the faculty of then Wittenberg College had already decided to provide the college's first official class of female students with a room of their own.

The reason was practical: Because all but one of the women students lived off campus in 1874, they had no place to retreat to during the day. And in the fishbowl that was their existence the fall they were freshmen, they clearly needed a retreat.

Two people who have taken a close look at the time give slightly different takes on what life was like for those first Wittenberg women.

But the kinds of attitudes they faced on campus seems transparent enough from the name with which the male students Christened the space.

They called it the Gab Room.

Principled or practical?

Former Wittenberg University President William A. Kinnison's recent book "Wittenberg: An American College" says faculty and others had been agitating for co-education since the 1850s.

In the face of initial opposition to the move, "the women were seeping in around the edges," Kinnison said in an interview.

The daughters and wives of faculty had been the first to enter the male domain, sometimes sitting in classes but not competing for grades.

Advocating for them, added Kinnison, was Springfield Daily Republic editor Clifton Nichols, "who is just pushing co-education all the time."

Wittenberg Professor John Stuckenberg had long made the theological argument that women should be admitted on the basis of the gospels: God had given women the responsibility Biblically to deliver the news of the greatest event in history, the resurrection.

To Stuckenberg, this spoke of equality before God.

But, as often is the case in social change, the reasons the college admitted women were a mixture of practicality and principle.

By 1874, the faculty had concluded that public opinion would permit the admission of women and had witnessed other colleges taking the step without ill results, Kinnison notes.

But the move's monetary merit lost on anyone, either.

In the face a weak economy, Kinnison writes, "the college needed more students and the income they would bring."

Juvenile or jaundiced?

Maybe the stares women drew when they arrived on campus Sept. 4, 1874, were unavoidable.

Observed the college newspaper, the Wittenberger: "Girls in the college was a new thing; new to the public, new to the girls, and last, but not least, new to the boys."

In the face of that morning's rain, "from out every window was peeping a (boy's) head, with eyes and mouth all standing aghast to witness and drink in the sublimity of the occasion," it added.

Oddly, it was the boys that first sought seek safety in numbers in the presence of a dozen women, reflecting a reaction Kinnison characterizes as "more flustered than superior."

The appearance of female students at unexpected times caused a "general scatterment" of the boys, the Wittenberg reports, turning dorm rooms into "barriers for their bashful inmates."

In class, the presence of females caused the most bashful boys to "shake in their boots," in fear that they'd make an embarrassing error.

That general awkwardness was exacerbated by boys whose unease expressed itself in snide remarks, criticism and witticisms at the girls' expense.

"It must have been very lonely to be a female student during this time," 2003 Wittenberg graduate Emily Johns writes in her paper "Lighting the Torch: Women at Wittenberg 1874-1942."

"Whatever the reasons for this reception" — juvenile nerves, spite or both — the result was the same, she argues.

"Instead of being welcomed by their classmates," Johns writes, "the women were shunned."

Their response was to become sisters-in-arms.

Only very rarely, reported the Wittenberger, was there the sight of "two, three or four of the Lady Students going through the Hall at the same time without having their arms around one another."

And in the room of their own, this sense of protective unity would grow stronger.

The Gab Room?

Johns quotes an 1878 edition of the Wittenberger saying that the gab in Gab Room "translated freely means to talk about the gentlemen students."

Clearly the men acted as though that's what the women were doing.

Formerly "collarless, coatless and cuffless boys" who had worn "tattered and torn" clothing to class beneath uncombed hair were cleaning up their acts, The Wittenberger reported.

Just as the few smokers were careful not to practice their filthy habit near the women, the boys tended to sit up straighter in class, one of many improvements that "are daily being made manifest" with women on campus, it said.

All this seemed to fulfill the prophecy of an October 1874 piece in the paper in which a Wittenberg male had proclaimed: "Their influence has the power of making me a more refined and polite man."

Johns found that by 20 years after the first women arrived, the Wittenberg yearbook, The Cycle, refuted the notion that the Gab Room was home only to gabbing.

"Do not think from all this that the girls are always gossiping," it said. "Oh, no! They discuss serious matters just as much and as often ... . Their studies are talked over, opinions given on this or that subject or part of a lesson, and help willingly granted to those asking it."

Wittenberg's first yearbook, the Aloha, had come to the women's defense, as well, saying the Gab Room had been "barbarously named."

But whatever the merits of other proposed names — "Grotto of Graces" being one — Wittenberg's semi-centennial souvenir of 1895 conceded that "the old name has become too deeply rooted in college life to be unceremoniously cast aside."

The Gab Room was by then a historic place.

Guy gossip

Male students did their share of gabbing in the late 1870s, some of it showing their attitudes about women and their capabilities.

Kinnison quotes one male proclaiming: "Girls can learn music, drawing and history, perhaps, and they might study languages with success and possibly comprehend some of the sciences, but they never could become mathematicians."

Events outside the college grounds also led some to be concerned about the women's capabilities and proper sphere of influence.

The Women's Crusade of 1877 — a Temperance Crusade among whose leaders was Springfielder Eliza Daniels Stewart — led women to speak out on social issues in a way they never had before.

It's not clear whether this led the faculty to vote not to allow women into Wittenberg's male literary societies — organizations that, at the time, were an integral part of the college experience.

Wanting that same experience, Wittenberg women formed their own literary societies, the Euterpean in 1886 and later the Olympian, which survived into the 1920s.

Happy together

Following the same pattern, the women's single room of their own on campus gave way in 1888 to a residence hall the women called Ferncliff. There they would sing songs, study, live together and develop the same kind of college traditions as their male counterparts.

Despite its dated style, the Semi-Centennial's description of the women of early Ferncliff seems true to life.

"There was the good, substantial girl who wanted everything done in a plane and practical way; there was the 'blue stocking,' with Greek, Latin and metaphysics at tongue's end; then there was the bright fun-living girl who was always planning a reception or sleighing part; last of all was the little, shy homesick girl who wanted all or none of these things ... but with quiet, womanly grace, submitted to all that was done."

'For both sexes'

By 1892, the presence of female students on campus was something Wittenberg clearly thought reflected well on the institution.

It advertised itself as a college "for both sexes," and "a school for ladies who desire a thorough, rather than a superficial education."

And in the elegant accommodations in Ferncliff Hall, it boasted of providing women with rooms of their own.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.