© 1997 Lawrence University Press
Occupational Therapy at Milwaukee-Downer: Expanding "Women's Sphere"
While the "separate sphere" ideology continued to govern most college women's lives, the "sphere" itself underwent considerable expansion. Educated women in the 19th century had moved from acquiring a thin veneer of social graces to pursuing scientific training that would prepare them to practice intelligently their "professions" of teaching, nursing, and homemaking.
In the early 20th century, although the importance of women's homemaker role continued to be emphasized, its attendant skills were increasingly applied to occupations outside the home. Thus, there came to be a legitimate place for college women in such areas as dietetics, social work, church work, library work, and secretarial work. As had always been the case, the merit of jobs in which Milwaukee-Downer women became involved was judged by Ellen Sabin according to the extent to which the best interests of society were served.
"Our students," she said, "are prepared to maintain themselves economically in many different lines of work. I believe," she immediately added, "they are also prepared to live in a manner elevating to themselves and helpful to society." With these words, expressed close to the end of her tenure, Sabin once again stressed the importance of service to society over the attainment of mere vocational goals. Her words also tacitly acknowledged that women's sphere had indeed expanded beyond what she had formerly considered its proper boundaries -- the home and the classroom -- to the world outside.
Ellen Sabin's willingness to see the sphere of college women expand beyond its traditional boundaries was tied not only to her determination that society's needs be served but also to her ever-present desire to bolster the growth of Milwaukee-Downer College. United States participation in the First World War, which gave rise to an immediate need for occupational therapists to engage in the rehabilitation of injured soldiers, presented Sabin a unique opportunity to serve society by introducing a program into the college curriculum the potential success of which was virtually guaranteed.
The impetus to introduce occupational therapy at Milwaukee-Downer College came from a former student and member of the art department, Elizabeth Greene Upham, who, as a consequence of her own visual handicap, had become interested in discovering means by which she might help handicapped individuals realize their potential. Naturally inclined toward the arts, she had specifically studied the uses of arts and crafts in the treatment of the disabled and had, as early as 1909, approached Sabin with a proposal to offer a course in handcrafts.
By Upham's own account, Sabin's consent to the introduction of a course in jewelry and silversmithing had been accompanied by the expression of strong reservations about the appropriateness of such an offering in an academic, liberal arts institution. Although not stated explicitly, it may well have been the case that Sabin initially considered this course too vocational in nature, appearing too much to involve Milwaukee-Downer in the business of teaching women a trade for the purpose of securing employment for pay. Yet, with the advent of the war, the creation within the art department of a program in occupational therapy could clearly be viewed as transcending any narrow, vocational purpose, to be viewed instead as responding to an expressed and urgent need of the United States military and as making a valuable contribution to the war effort.
Sabin now found it possible to be more receptive to Elizabeth Upham's ideas, especially as the latter was now functioning in a new role, as a researcher in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. Just after school opened in the fall of 1917, Upham had taken leave from her position as director of the Milwaukee-Downer art department to participate in the war effort in Washington, D.C. Her specific assignment was to study the problem of rehabilitation of the disabled and to devise means by which to rapidly produce an adequate number of well-trained occupational therapists.
In lively and lengthy correspondence during 1918, Upham reminded Sabin that back in the spring of 1917 they had agreed that Milwaukee-Downer had the appropriate equipment, courses, and faculty for the training of occupational therapists, as outlined in an article Upham had written for a journal titled Modern Hospital, and that instituting such a program would enlarge the college's usefulness. That Sabin's receptivity to the idea became increasingly positive was indicated in later correspondence, which discussed the politics of successfully instituting an occupational therapy program at Milwaukee-Downer, the possibilities of obtaining government funds to aid in doing this, and the potentially strong competition from a Mrs. Slagle at the Henry B. Faville Memorial School of Occupations in Chicago.
Significantly, nowhere in their correspondence did either Sabin or Upham stress the vocational consequences of offering an occupational therapy program at the college, namely that it would equip large numbers of women with the ability to obtain paid employment. Their focus, instead, was upon serving both the general needs of the handicapped, civilian as well as military, and the particular needs of their country in time of war. In terms of the college's reputation and potential for growth, Sabin could also be particularly gratified that the occupational therapy program evoked many expressions of commendation for Milwaukee-Downer, based not only upon how the college was aiding the war effort but also upon the quality of the coursework that it was offering in this field.
Implicit in this dual focus upon serving society and fostering institutional growth, then, was a willingness to see "women's sphere" expand. Women would no longer be limited to making only indirect contribution to society through intelligent child-rearing and home-management practices; they would now also be trained to function in various settings and deal directly with the ravages of war and of industrial society. Yet, although this encouraged women to fill positions in the world outside the home, it represented only an expansion of, not a departure from, the ideology of women's separate sphere, for it persisted in placing women in a role that, it was thought, was uniquely theirs to play. A Milwaukee-Downer publication of 1918 identified this role as promoting the "conservation of life":
The second year of participation in the war is revealing new demands for the trained woman. It is foreshadowing the vital part she is to play not only in the war but in the reconstruction after the war. It is the part which she alone can play, the task that is peculiarly woman's, the conservation of life.
Ellen Sabin's rhetoric was filled with statements that stressed the importance of women's role as conservators of all that was good about civilization. "Conservation," she told the women graduating Lake Forest University in 1917, "is the compelling word." The war, she continued, was placing the most precious gains of the human race in jeopardy, and it was women's job to "rescue every imperiled good." In Sabin's view, this duty was not confined to the wartime situation but was a perpetual responsibility of women in general -- and of college women in particular. In an early commencement address, that of 1905, she had told her audience:
Women are the acknowledged conservators of society, and they must be nobly prepared for their limitless responsibilities. If the scions of royal houses must be carefully fitted for their high careers, no less must be adequately educated women -- companions and mothers of sovereigns! . . . Women with trained judgment, large and altruistic spirit, [and] enlightened patriotism refine, and elevate all relationships. Such women are all too few, and their number should be the jealous concern of an enlightened public. Public interest. . . particularly requires the college woman of liberal training to preserve general culture.
Whether or not Sabin was conscious of it, these sentiments strongly echoed those of the 19th-century founders of higher education for women in Milwaukee, who had viewed women as the "bearers of civilization," as the conduits through which culture was transmitted to men who were otherwise engaged in business or political pursuits. Apparently, Sabin's commitment to this notion was very intense, because she communicated it to her students with an almost religious fervor. Thus, a member of the Class of 1915, attempting to identify the Sabin conception of women's role, later recalled:
Her idea, Miss Sabin's idea -- I think this, I think she thought women were going to save the world. And they would really have to live up to everything that college had taught them. And then they would go out, and they would save the world. I'm sure of that. I can almost hear her say, "Women will save the world."
At the end of her administration, in June, 1921, Sabin was still insisting on women's power to influence the world through the exercise of their roles as wife, mother, teacher, nurse, and social guardian and still viewing this as equal in importance to "man's great part in the splendid realms of business and politics." Though women's sphere may have expanded to allow their direct intervention in the problems generated by war and industrial society, it still was distinctly separate from the sphere of men.
What now becomes a question is how students were actually affected by the gradual expansion during the early 20th century of the "women's sphere." Milwaukee-Downer rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, was it not possible, for example, that students actually viewed the introduction of home economics and occupational therapy programs into the curriculum as encouraging their entrance into "careers"? More generally, was it not possible that, whether or not the college so intended, Milwaukee-Downer students came to feel less restricted by college rhetoric about the limits of women's roles and more encouraged to act with increasing independence?
Looking beyond college rhetoric to the realities of everyday life in the institution actually gives us reason to respond to this question in both the negative and the affirmative. On the one hand, there is much evidence that the institution, acting in the role of surrogate parent, organized daily life on campus in such a way as to place rather severe restrictions upon student independence. Yet, at the very same time, there were factors in the Milwaukee-Downer environment that supported student independence. This was true to some extent of the rituals and traditions of the school, and true to a very great extent of the very strong models of independence provided by the college's all-female, unmarried faculty and staff.
Part II: Life at Milwaukee-Downer
