Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-w7rtg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-04T03:41:50.285Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Competitive Examinations and the Culture of Masculinity in Oxbridge Undergraduate Life, 1850-1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Paul R. Deslandes*
Affiliation:
Department of History at Texas Tech University

Extract

As the primary means through which academic success was measured and professional credentials were established, competitive examinations for university degrees and civil service appointments became a frequently discussed topic among the Victorian and Edwardian elite in Great Britain. Students and dons (the term for college fellows with teaching and pastoral responsibilities) at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as a whole range of outside observers, regularly commented on the importance of these exercises during the seven decades that passed between the curricular and administrative reforms of the 1850s and the conclusion of World War I, years in which these ancient institutions achieved their modern form and functioned, in the words of Jan Morris, as “power house [s]” and “conscious instruments of Victorian national greatness.” In an 1863 Student's Guide to the University of Cambridge, for example, J.R. Seeley, a famous Cambridge don and historian, celebrated the invigorating, youthful, and competitive nature of the Tripos (or Honors) examinations in a lengthy discussion of academic life: “Into these [examinations] flock annually the ablest young men … who during their University course have received all the instruction that the best Tutors, and all the stimulus that a competition well known to be severe, can give…. The contest is one into which the cleverest lads in the country enter [and] it may safely be affirmed that even the lowest place in these Triposes is justly called an honour.” By the 1860s, when Seeley first penned these comments, competitive examinations had become, in the words of one contemporary observer, “matters of … much interest and importance not only to those whose future success in life depended upon them, but to the public in general.” Public interest was further fueled, throughout this period, by numerous articles in the periodical press that discussed and debated the general value of competitive examinations and by the regular publication of test results in widely circulated, national newspapers such as the Times.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Morris, Jan ed., The Oxford Book of Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 239.Google Scholar

2 Seeley, J.R. The Student's Guide to the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1863), 15.Google Scholar

3 [Hopkins, W., “I. Remarks on Competitive Examinations, Particularly on the Examination for Appointments in the Indian Civil Service,Occasional Papers 3 (December 1859): 101.Google Scholar

4 Soffer, Reba Discipline and Power: The University, History and the Making of an English Elite, 1870-1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 136. For examples of press coverage, see “University Intelligence,” Times, 14 May, 1860, 12; “University Intelligence,” Times, 7 June, 1880, 8; and “University Intelligence,” Times, 27 June, 1900, 11.Google Scholar

5 Montgomery, R. J. Examinations: An Account of Their Evolution as Administrative Devices in England (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1965), xii and Roach, John Public Examinations in England, 1850-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

6 For general discussions, see Perkin, Harold The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880 (London: Routledge, 1989) and Soffer, Discipline and Power. Google Scholar

7 On competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Service and the Home Civil Service (which were instituted in 1853 and 1870 respectively), see Reader, W.J. Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Class in Nineteenth-Century England (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 8599. On examinations in state-sponsored elementary schools, see Aldrich, Richard An Introduction to the History of Education (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982), 57-61.Google Scholar

8 For very good examples of this particular approach, see Brock, M.G. and Curthoys, M.C. eds., The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); Brooke, Christopher A History of the University of Cambridge, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Harrison, Brian ed. The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) and Searby, Peter A History of the University of Cambridge, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

9 Rothblatt, Sheldon The Revolution of the Dons: Cambridge and Society in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); idem., “The Student Sub-Culture and the Examinations System in Early 19th Century Oxbridge,” in The University in Society ed. Stone, Lawrence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 1:247-303; and idem., “Failure in Early Nineteenth-Century Oxford and Cambridge,” History of Education 11,1 (March 1982): 1-21.Google Scholar

10 There are several reasons for examining Oxford and Cambridge in tandem here. The ancient universities adopted similarly styled examination systems that became increasingly formalized throughout the course of the nineteenth century. This led to a tendency, on the part of students at both institutions, to view these academic exercises in a surprisingly coherent manner. Despite notable differences in curricular focus, Oxford and Cambridge constituted, within this period, what we might think of as a coherent and unified cultural system. In other words, Oxbridge undergraduates shared values, ideals, views, and lifestyles that united junior members at either institution more than they separated them. Indeed, my use of the term “Oxbridge” reflects this general approach. The meanings that the examination process acquired remained strikingly similar at both Oxford and Cambridge and the arguments that are presented within these pages might be applied, with equal force, to a consideration of either institution.Google Scholar

11 Sandars, T.C.Undergraduate Literature,The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 3,70 (28 February 1857): 196. See, also, Mallett, Charles E. A History of the University of Oxford (London: Methuen, 1927), 3:487.Google Scholar

12 For some examples of this scholarship, see Roper, Michael and Tosh, John, eds., Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1991) and Tosh, John, A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

13 Latham, Henry On the Action of Examinations Considered as a Means of Selection (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1877), 153.Google Scholar

14 On this broad transformation, see Newsome, David Godliness and Good Learning: Four Studies of a Victorian Ideal (London: Cassell, 1961).Google Scholar

15 On the socio-economic origins of Oxbridge students, see Anderson, C. Arnold and Schraper, Miriam School and Society in England: Social Backgrounds of Oxford and Cambridge Students (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1952); Greenstein, Daniel “The Junior Members, 1900-1990: A Profile,” in The History of the University of Oxford, 8:56; Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society, 369-372 and Stone, Lawrence “The Size and Composition of the Oxford Student Body, 1580-1910,” in The University in Society, 1:60-67.Google Scholar

16 On rites of passage, see Tosh, JohnWhat Should Historians Do With Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth Century Britain,History Workshop Journal 38 (Autumn 1994): 184; Clawson, Mary Ann Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender and Fraternalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) and Carnes, Mark C. Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). On the various anxieties that mark men's experiences, see Brod, Harry “Introduction: Themes and Theses of Men's Studies”; Filene, Peter “The Secret of Men's History;” and Kimmel, Michael “The Contemporary ‘Crisis’ of Masculinity in Historical Perspective,” in The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies ed. Brod, Harry (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1987), 1-17,103-119, 122.Google Scholar

17 Cox, G.V. Recollections of Oxford, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1870), 3940. On the reform of the examination system, see Rothblatt, “The Student Sub-Culture and the Examination System in Early 19th Century Oxbridge,” 288289.Google Scholar

18 Heywood, James ed., The Recommendations of the Oxford University Commissioners, with Selections from Their Report; and A History of the University Subscription Tests, Including Notices of the University and Collegiate Visitations (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1853), 254269.Google Scholar

19 Montgomery, Examinations, 67.Google Scholar

20 On this development and some of the differences between Oxford and Cambridge, see Searby, A History of the University of Cambridge, 3: 159 and Curthoys, M.C.The Examination System,“ in The History of the University of Oxford ed. Brock, M.G. and Curthoys, M.C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 6:344-346.Google Scholar

21 Montgomery, Examinations, 7 and Jocelyn, H.D.The University's Contribution to Classical Studies,“ in The Illustrated History of Oxford University ed. Prest, John (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 170171.Google Scholar

22 Jocelyn, The University's Contribution to Classical Studies,169171.Google Scholar

23 For discussions of these broader trends, see Heyck, T. W. The Transformation of Intellectual Life in Victorian England (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 155189 and Rothblatt, Sheldon “The Diversification of Higher Education in England,” in The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860-1930, Expansion, Diversification, Social Opening, and Professionalization in England, Germany, Russia and the United States ed. Jarausch, Konrad H. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 131-148.Google Scholar

24 Historians of the universities have taken some interest in charting the development of these academic disciplines. In addition to Reba Soffer's Discipline and Power, see her earlier work, Ethics and Society in England: The Revolution in the Social Sciences, 1870-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). These developments can be traced most effectively in the pages of the university calendars that outline in full detail the requirements for all areas of study. See the Oxford University Calendar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1868-1920) and the Cambridge University Calendar (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1857-1909).Google Scholar

25 Christopher Brooke has provided figures for Caius College, Cambridge that reflect this trend. See Brooke, A History of the University of Cambridge, 4: 294. Mark Curthoys has also observed this trend for Oxford where over half the B.A.s granted in the 1850s were pass degrees as opposed to the 16 percent granted in 1909/1910. See Curthoys, “The Examination System,” 6:360.Google Scholar

26 Everett, William On the Cam: Lectures on the University of Cambridge in England (London: S.O. Beeton, 1868), xxv.Google Scholar

27 Heywood, ed., The Recommendations of the Oxford University Commissioners, 5.Google Scholar

28 Bankes, George Nugent Cambridge Trifles; or, Sputterings from an Undergraduate Pen (London: Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1881), 8485.Google Scholar

29 See Jowett, BenjaminExaminations During the Year 1886, February 22, 1886,Oxford University Miscellaneous Papers, vol.1, Bodleian Library, Oxford, G.A. Oxon.b.137. Prior to 1882 at Cambridge, the Triposes generally occurred in January. See Brooke, A History of the University of Cambridge, 4:298.Google Scholar

30 “May,” Ye Rounde Table: An Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany 1,4 (11 May, 1878): 50.Google Scholar

31 Everett, On the Cam, 54.Google Scholar

32 The “Marble Palace” quote is from Jocelyn, “The University's Contribution to Classical Studies,” 174. On the building of the New Schools, see “The New Schools at Oxford,” Times, 2 June, 1882, 4 and Tyack, GeoffreyThe Architecture of the University and the Colleges,“ in The Illustrated History of Oxford University, 112-113.Google Scholar

33 Godley, Alfred DenisA Song of the Schools,Verses to Order (London: Methuen, 1892), 4041.Google Scholar

34 These concepts are employed, in varying ways, in 'Varsity 13, 327 (9 June, 1914): 21; [Copleston, R.S., Oxford Spectator 29 (24 November, 1868): 3; “Words and their Derivations,” Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford 1,4 (2 May, 1874): 58; “Practicable Projects,” Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford 1, 13 (9 February, 1875): 203; “On Our Rounds,” Supplement to the Cambridge Tatler 3 (20 March, 1877): 1; and Anstey, F. [Guthrie, Thomas Anstey, A Long Retrospect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), 99.Google Scholar

35 Hilton, Arthur Clement to his Mother, 25 November, 1870, The Works of Arthur Clement Hilton Together With His Life and Letters ed. Edgcumbe, Robert P. (Cambridge: Macmillan and Bowes, 1904), 59. Hilton was reflecting on the experiences of his friends. He would have completed the Previous Examination himself during the 1869-70 academic year.Google Scholar

36 This changes by the 1880s when the additional subjects became Mechanics, French and German. See the Cambridge University Calendar (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1886), 13.Google Scholar

37 Everett, On the Cam, 55.Google Scholar

38 “Ye Gentle Art of Cribbing,” Isis 20 (4 March, 1893): 85.Google Scholar

39 Cambridge University Calendar (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1857), 13, Cambridge University Calendar (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1878), 25 and Cambridge University Calendar (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1896), 46-47.Google Scholar

40 O.C. [Lawrence, A.H., Reminiscences of Cambridge (London: For Private Circulation Only, 1889), 57. For another historian's perspective on this process, see Searby, A History of the University of Cambridge, 3:179.Google Scholar

41 “Editorial Notes,” Undergraduate 1,8 (2 May, 1888): 115.Google Scholar

42 On tutorials, which figured much more prominently at Oxford than at Cambridge, see Engel, A.J. From Clergyman to Don: The Rise of the Academic Profession in Nineteenth-Century Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) and Soffer, Discipline and Power, 23,133. On the importance of reading parties during vacations, see Charles Dickens's, “A Dictionary of the University of Oxford” in his Dickens's Dictionary of Oxford and Cambridge (London: Macmillan, 1884), 100-106. On the significance of hiring private tutors, see “How to Get Through the Pass Schools,” Oxford Examiner 3 (Trinity Term 1890): 19-20 and “Letters to the Editor,” Oxford Examiner 3 (Trinity Term 1890): 19.Google Scholar

43 Everett, On the Cam, 65.Google Scholar

44 Cooke, Desmond F.T.Oxford in the Long Vacation,Oxford Point of View 2,7 (August 1903): 156157.Google Scholar

45 See, for example, “Arrowlets,” Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford 1,3 (18 April, 1874): 47; Sir Kay [Poley, A.P., “Notes,” Ye Rounde Table: An Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany 1,5 (1 June, 1878): 80 and “How to Get Through the Pass Schools,” 19-20.Google Scholar

46 “Hints to Examiners,” Momus: A Semi-Occasional University Periodical 2 (1 April, 1868): 10.Google Scholar

47 Humor often serves multiple functions. While it is intended to amuse, it always reveals deeper social attitudes. Even when undergraduates exaggerated their own sense of anxiety to humor readers, they were drawing on deeply rooted cultural values. Quips about the stress of examinations were funny precisely because they were based on genuine sentiments. On the study of humor, see Palmer, Jerry Taking Humor Seriously (London: Routledge, 1994).Google Scholar

48 These traits became especially pervasive in the years after 1870. Similar descriptive terms could also be applied to other activities. See Hansen, Peter H.Albert Smith, the Alpine Club, and the Invention of Mountaineering in Mid-Victorian Britain,Journal of British Studies 34,3 (July 1995): 300324. On the ideals of nineteenth and twentieth century competitive manhood, see Stearns, Peter Be a Man! Males in Modern Society (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990), 112-118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 X.A. [Christopher Wordsworth], “Tripos Fever,” Tatler in Cambridge 28 (1 November, 1871): 31.Google Scholar

50 “Motley Notes,” Granta 5, 91 (16 June, 1892): 395 and O.C., Reminiscences of Cambridge Life, 56.Google Scholar

51 Everett, On the Cam, 5556.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 96.Google Scholar

53 For a discussion of some of these issues, see Spain, DaphneThe Spatial Foundations of Men's Friendships and Men's Power,“ in Men's Friendships ed. Nardi, Peter (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992), 6972.Google Scholar

54 [Hugh Reginald Haweis], “Confessions of a Welsh Rabbit Eater,” Lion University Magazine 2 (November 1858): 110 and “Open Letters. I. To Any Freshman,” 'Varsity 6, 1 (18 October, 1906): 9.Google Scholar

55 O.C., Reminiscences of Cambridge, 144.Google Scholar

56 The Works of Arthur Clement Hilton, 59-60.Google Scholar

57 “Thoughts that Occur,” Varsity 6, 23, (13 June, 1907): 347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 “The Vision of Mirtha,” Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford 1,9 (31 October, 1874): 139140.Google Scholar

59 “Songs for the ‘Little’ & ‘Great’ Go,” Oxford Wit 1 (1855): 18-19.Google Scholar

60 For specific examples of how undergraduates viewed these preparations, see “Epitaph on a Departed Long Vacation,” College Rhymes 5 (1864): 125-126; P.M.W., “The Song of the Shirk,” Light Blue incorporated with the Light Green: The Cambridge University Magazine 1 (May 1873): 2526; “Between Two Fires,” Chaperon, or the Oxford Cherivari 1, 2 (22 October, 1910): 15 and C.E.W.B. (Worcester College, Oxford), “The Undergrad.'s Soliloquy,” College Rhymes 6 (1865): 155-56.Google Scholar

61 Butler, Judith Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990), 2425, 134-149.Google Scholar

62 Everett, On the Cam, 66; Tosh, John A Man's Place, 4-5, 115-116.Google Scholar

63 For examples of this, see C.H.C., “Simple Simon in for his Little-Go,” College Rhymes 7 (1866): 154 and “Society Notes,” Jokelet 1 (January 1886): 2. Reba Soffer also points to this view of examinations in Discipline and Power, 137.Google Scholar

64 Peter Gay has noted the triumph of this particular version of masculinity in the later nineteenth century despite the strong presence of competing ideals. See Gay, Peter The Cultivation of Hatred (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), 112116.Google Scholar

65 “Voices from ‘The Schools'. No. I,” Great Tom: A University Magazine 2 (June 1861): 1719. The language of affliction, trial and ordeal also appears in [Copleston, R. S., Oxford Spectator (Reprinted Edition) 31 (8 December, 1868): 181 and 'Varsity 13,327 (9 June, 1914): 22.Google Scholar

66 “Words and Their Derivations,” Shotover Paper, or, Echoes from Oxford 1,4 (2 May, 1874): 58.Google Scholar

67 [Copleston, R.S., Oxford Spectator (Reprinted Edition) 30 (1 December, 1868): 173; C.C. (B.N.C.—Brasenose College, Oxford), “What Locksley Hall said before He passed his Oxford Responsions (vulgo Smalls),” College Rhymes 1 (1860): 137; X.A., “Tripos Fever,” 30-31 and “Tripos Fever,” Granta, 2,12 (17 May, 1889): 1.Google Scholar

68 “Oxford and Public Schools Intelligence,” Cambridge Tatler 3 (20 March, 1877): 910.Google Scholar

69 The anthropological concept of liminality is explicitly developed in Turner, Victor The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Press, 1969), 167.Google Scholar

70 Undergraduates routinely used the concept of the “little world” in their writings. See [Lushington, Godfrey, “Oxford,Oxford and Cambridge Magazine 1 (April 1856): 245 and “Freshmen,” Isis 153 (22 October, 1898): 3.Google Scholar

71 “By Way of Introduction,” Bump 2 (20 May, 1899): 2 and Aston, John “The Imp of Schools,” Bump 4 (May 1902): 11.Google Scholar

72 “The Cambridge Sphinx,” Cambridge Observer 1,16 (31 January, 1893): 5.Google Scholar

73 X.A, Tripos Fever,29. For another description of a nightmare, see ‘Dream Before the Coming General Examination,” Momus: A Semi-Occasional University Periodical 2 (1 April, 1868): 13.Google Scholar

74 'Vanity 13, 327 (9 June, 1914): 22.Google Scholar

75 On one manifestation of this cultural tendency, see MacKenzie, John M.The Imperial Pioneer and Hunter and the British Masculine Stereotype in Late Victorian and Edwardian Times,“ in Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940 eds. Mangan, J.A. and Walvin, James (New York: St Martin's Press, 1987), 176198. For another example, see Boyd, Kelly “Exemplars and Ingrates: Imperialism and the Boys’ Story Paper, 1880-1930,” Historical Research 67, 163 (June 1994): 143-155.Google Scholar

76 On the soldier hero ideal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Dawson, Graham Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994). On the ways in which the classical hero created a paradigm for male behavior among, especially, the nineteenth century elite, see Kestner, Joseph Masculinities in Victorian Painting (Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1995), 48-79.Google Scholar

77 “Thoughts that Occur. ‘The Schools',” 'Varsity 8,17 (29 April 1909): 501502, and E.R.W. (Exeter College), “Sequel to ‘Parva Licet Componere Magnis'; or, the LARKY Gownsman in for ‘Greats',” College Rhymes 3 (1862): 123. On children's magazines and books, see Castle, Kathryn Britannia's Children: Reading Colonialism Through Children's Books and Magazines (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

78 “Elegy on an Undergraduate Graveyard,” Snarl 2 (14 November 1899): 15.Google Scholar

79 [Haweis, Hugh Reginald, “Editor's Address,Lion University Magazine 1 (May 1858): 5; “Editorial,” Pageant Post (June 1907): 2-3; “The Ordinary Undergraduate,” Rattle 1,3 (February 1886): 3.Google Scholar

80 “The Ordinary Undergraduate”; “Manners Maketh Man,” Screed 1,1 (11 November, 1899): 5.Google Scholar

81 Sinha, Mrinalini Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 112.Google Scholar

82 Everett, On the Cam, 92.Google Scholar

83 “Two Trips,” Granta 10:214 (5 June, 1897): 365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84 “Thoughts on the Christmas Vacation,” College Rhymes 6 (1865): 32 and “… Qui Honore Non Ambiunt,” New Cut (May 1914): 39.Google Scholar

85 “To My Pen. (Picked up in the New Schools),” Isis 4 (8 June, 1899): 28.Google Scholar

86 On these events, see Brooke, A History of the University of Cambridge, 4: 324325.Google Scholar

87 On one aspect of this, see Deslandes, Paul R.'The Foreign Element': Newcomer and the Rhetoric of Race, Nation and Empire in Oxbridge Undergraduate Culture, 1850-1920,Journal of British Studies 37: 1 (January 1998): 5490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Everett, On the Cam, 66.Google Scholar

89 “Tripos Fever,” Granta, 1 and “Lights of a Moderator,” Momus: A Semi-Occasional University Periodical 1 (3 March, 1866): 5.Google Scholar

90 For other examples that employ the war metaphor, see “Epitaph on a Departed Long Vacation,” College Rhymes 5 (1864): 125-126 and X.Y.B., “Objectless,” College Rhymes 8 (1867): 72.Google Scholar

91 “A Schools Ditty. AIR—'Three little maids from schools.’” Rattle 2,7 (23 February, 1887): 4.Google Scholar

92 [Sheringham, H.T., “The Classical Tripos,Bubble (10 June, 1898): 14.Google Scholar

93 “A Causerie,” Pink. For the May Week. A University Publication 1 (5 June, 1899): 2. For another Cambridge example of this, see Rotundus [pseud.], “Oxford Letter,” Cambridge Tatler 10 (29 May, 1877): 12.Google Scholar

94 See, for example, an excerpt from G.W.E. Russell's Social Silhouettes that appeared in In Praise of Oxford: An Anthology of Prose and Verse eds. Seccombe, Thomas and Scott, H. Spencer (London: Constable and Co., 1912), 2:445.Google Scholar

95 Dickens, A Dictionary of the University of Oxford,119.Google Scholar

96 Everett, On the Cam, 92.Google Scholar

97 Reader, Professional Men, 100115.Google Scholar

98 Dickens, A Dictionary of the University of Oxford,119.Google Scholar

100 “Thoughts that Occur. ‘The Schools',” 501.Google Scholar

101 “Advice to Scholars,” Playmates: The Oxford ‘Chums', (May 1909): 19.Google Scholar

101 “Thoughts that Occur. ‘The Schools,’” 501. For other examples, see “Cambridge and Competition,” Granta 1, 3 (1 February, 1889): 3 and “The Futility of Examinations,” Granta 5,89 (4 June, 1892): 357-358.Google Scholar

102 The importance of these displays has not gone unnoticed by anthropologists. See Spain, “The Spatial Foundations of Men's Friendships and Men's Powers,” 61.Google Scholar

103 Arthur Clement Hilton to his Mother, November 25, 1870, 59; Edward Jupp to a Sister, Correspondence of a Junior Student of Christchurch, Oxford, in the Years 1868-1870 (Blackheath: n.p., 1871), 29.Google Scholar

104 “The Questionist's Vision,” Cambridge Terminal Magazine 3 (April 1859): 107. Similar concerns about the reactions of women to failure are revealed in “The Dream of the Junior Soph. A Lay of the Little-Go,” College Rhymes 2 (1861): 87-88.Google Scholar

105 “A Letter,” Isis 2 (11 May, 1892): 15.Google Scholar

106 These roles are discussed in Tosh, JohnDomesticity and Manliness in the Victorian Middle Class: The Family of Edward White Benson,“ in Manful Assertions, 5965.Google Scholar

107 P.M.W., The Song of the Shirk,26 and “Apologetically Dedicated to the Memory of the Late Charles Wolfe,” College Rhymes 6 (1865): 49.Google Scholar

108 Anstey, F. A Long Retrospect, 100.Google Scholar

109 Williams, John 'Is My Son Likely to Pass?’ Or, A Few Words to Parents Upon The Most Prevalent Intellectual Diseases Incident to School and College Life; With Suggestions as to Their Treatment and Cure: Also, An Appendix Containing Letters on the Subject of Classical Education (London: Rivingtons, 1864), 15.Google Scholar

110 Downing, Samuel Penrose The Late Classical Tripos. Irresponsibility of Examiners in Accusing Candidates of Unfair Practices. An Appeal to the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Council and the Masters and Fellows of the University of Cambridge (Shaftesbury, England: n.p., 1882), 13.Google Scholar

111 Holmes, J. F. to Slade, Mr. E. August 2, 1903, in An Oxford Correspondence of 1903 ed. Warde Fowler, W. (Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1904), 34. The editor changed the names of the correspondents in an attempt to protect their anonymity.Google Scholar

112 “Villanette,” 'Varsity 1,13 (21 May, 1901): 194; “The Sufferance Problem,” Cambridge Magazine 1,1 (20 January, 1912): 25; “Editorial Notes,” Undergraduate 1,17 (8 November, 1888): 260 and “Women's Degrees,” Granta 10,208 (24 April, 1897): 263. Several studies have examined certain aspects of the struggles that women faced at Oxford and Cambridge. See, for example, Brittain, Vera The Women of Oxford: A Fragment of History (London: Harrap, 1960); Howarth, Janet and Curthoys, Mark “The Political Economy of Women's Higher Education in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” Historical Research 60,142 (June 1987): 208-231; Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univerersity Press, 1989), 1-45; McWilliams-Tullberg, Rita Women at Cambridge: 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Sutherland, Gillian “The Movement for the Higher Education of Women: Its Social and Intellectual Context in England, c. 1840-80,” in Politics and Social Change in Modern Britain: Essays Presented to A.F. Thompson ed. Waller, P.J. (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1987), 91-116; Sutherland, Gillian “‘Nasty Forward Minxes': Cambridge and the Higher Education of Women,” in Cambridge Contributions ed. Ormrod, Sarah J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 88-102. Carol Dyhouse has provided an interesting national overview in her No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870-1939 (London: University College London Press, 1995). For a work that begins to examine the culture of women's colleges, see Vicinus, Martha Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) 121-162. For an account of women's performance on the Classical Tripos at Cambridge during this period, see Breay, Claire “Women and the Classical Tripos, 1869-1914,” in Classics in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Community ed. Stray, Christopher (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1999), 48-70.Google Scholar

113 Fitch, J.G.Women and the UniversitiesContemporary Review 57 (August 1890): 248.Google Scholar

114 “Women's Degrees,” 264.Google Scholar

115 Fitch, Women and the Universities,250.Google Scholar

116 “Newnham,” Cambridge Observer 1,5 (31 May, 1892): 9.Google Scholar

117 Terry, EdithSocial Customs,“ in A Newnham Anthology ed. Phillips, Ann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 54.Google Scholar

118 Katharine, K. (Radford) Pinsent, “To an Invigilator,” in A Newnham Anthology, 55-56.Google Scholar

119 “Review of Term,” Girton Review 2 (July 1882): 2.Google Scholar

120 Elizabeth, Emily Jones, Constance As I Remember: An Autobiographical Ramble (London: A. and C. Black, 1922), 55.Google Scholar

121 “Letter from the Oxford Correspondent,” Brown Book: Lady Margaret Hall Chronicle (1908): 38 and “Oxford Letter,” The Brown Book: Lady Margaret Hall Chronicle (1910): 31.Google Scholar

122 “A Song of Degrees,” Girton Review 7 (March 1884): 20.Google Scholar

123 Wilson, Jane E.Prize Song,Girton Review 16 (March 1887): 8.Google Scholar

124 “The Question of Degrees,” Fritillary 5 (June 1895): 7879.Google Scholar

125 “Editorial,” Pageant Post (June 1907): 3.Google Scholar