University of Virginia Library

Gothic, Gawdy Bryn Mawr:
A Lot Of Cerebral Power

FEN MONTAIGNE

When I walked into the
bathroom on first floor
Rhoads. I immediately
proceeded to the stall on the
far right. During my short stay
in the dorm I always used that
same stall, for it somehow
seemed set off from the other
ones.

There was something
different, perhaps even unique,
about that particular booth in
the bathroom – in any case, I
achieved there the tranquility I
desperately needed, the
tranquility that usually only
came in the tomblike
tolletaries of home.

I was concentrating
terrifically well when the door
was flung open and,
recognizing my blue tennis
shoes, someone said, "Is that
you, Fen?"

Recognizing that voice, I
answered, "Yes, Peggy, it's
me."

"Well," she said, "you're
going to have to get used to
trading noises with a woman."

"Peggy," I replied, "I don't
think I'll ever get used to
trading noises with anyone, let
alone a woman."

"Believe me," she stated,
"after a few weeks at Bryn
Mawr you'd get used to it."

I mumbled some inaudible
something, as we both finished
what needed to be done.

Seminar Classes:

Socrates Would Have Been Proud

Excluding my initial
timidity with co-ed toilets, the
rest of my visit to Bryn Mawr
College was devoid of
awkwardness and anxiety. In
fact, it was a visit that left me
fascinated, infatuated, and
altogether reluctant to leave
the tiny school.

I had gone to Bryn Mawr
knowing that it was perhaps
the most infamous of that
notorious group, "The Seven
Sisters." I heard the school was
a bastion of intellectualism,
feminism, and the home of
that disgruntled, grubby, and
snobby stereotype known as
the "Bryn Mawr Bitch." I had
pictured a little school, with
hundreds of little "bitches"
scurrying about, occasionally
taking their four eyes off the
page to scowl at a young man
or two.

I felt tense as I approached
the college, which is tucked
away in ritzy, residential Bryn
Mawr, part of suburban
Philadelphia's "Main Line." I
felt no better when I got out of
the car and approached the
campus, for the brown-stoned,
gargoyled, Gothic buildings,
while perhaps eerily beautiful,
were certainly ominous and
imposing. The place was part
fortress, part campus, and part
monastery.

Passing through an arched
entranceway, I saw in front of
me a huge, grassy quadrangle,
with a medieval
chapel-cathedral in the center,
surrounded on all sides by the
same gaudy Gothicness.

Although it was the middle
of a Thursday afternoon,
the place was deserted. I saw no
one. I heard nothing but the
hum of traffic on the Lancaster
Pike.

I couldn't understand why
no one was out enjoying the
unseasonably warm weather.
Soon, though, one of Bryn
Mawr's thousand students
trotted down the library steps,
shuffled across one of the
quad's many paths, and headed
into a dorm with spires,
turrets, and an occasional
stained glass window.

Other students began to
appear, most hunched over
their books, quietly making
their way to wherever it was
they had to go. Although no
one offered a spontaneous
"hi" or "hello," as are
common from strangers at
Southern schools, I still felt a
sort of quiet warmth, a sort of
smallness, a sense of
community that was both
relaxing and refreshing.

***

That evening, as I sat in the
intimate, wood-paneled dining
room of Rhoads Hall, I was
struck by the quiet intensity of
Bryn Mawr. The students
surrounding me of course
possessed different
personalities and diverse

backgrounds, and to attempt
to sketch some sort of
stereotype would be absurd.
The types and characters were
numerous yet they possessed a
common denominator. Every
student in the dining room, and
indeed every student at the
school, was quite intelligent.

It wasn't even necessary to
talk to the women at Bryn
Mawr, (or the men attending
the school from nearby
Haverford College) to discover
they all possessed marvelous
cerebral power. They wore
their brains on their faces.
They just looked smart,
goddammit.

And when the talk began, I
immediately became aware of
the sharpness of their minds,
the quickness of their tongues,
for whether the words at the
dinner table concerned Camus,
Carling Black Label, or cars,
the conversation never seemed
to drag. The room was full of a
wit, an intellectual jiving that
one rarely finds in the greasy
booths of Elsie's Truck Stop.

After the not-so-bad
institutional food, many of the
students returned to their
rooms and did what I expected
them to do – they studied.
And what luxury surrounded
them as they worked! Their
"chambers" were quiet,
spacious, often sporting large
casement windows and old
wooden doors with colored
glass, lead strips – the whole
English country house scene.

The hallways were equally
elegant – dark, wooden, quiet
things that were a joy to walk
in. Rhoads, and the rest of the
dorms at Bryn Mawr, were
romantic, castle-like affairs; a
fine place for poets, mad,
melancholy women, and just
plain students.

While everyone was reading,
or thinking, or watching Star
Trek on TV, I prowled about
the campus, enjoying the full
moon and the constant quiet.
Many a student was perched
over a book, laboring under the
glare of a 200-watt study lamp,
totally oblivious to the stranger
peeking into their window.

I knew I was safe in my
perverted peepings. Rarely did
anyone move around outside
except, perhaps, to go from
dorm to library or from library
to dorm.

The place was always so
quiet. As a matter of fact, the
place was more than quiet. It
was spooky – nice, but
spooky. The full moon, the
bare trees, and everywhere I
looked there was Gothic,
Gothic, Gothic. Bryn Mawr
would be the perfect setting
for a romantic murder
mystery. Did you ever see the
cover of one of those
paperback Victorian novels,
with the deranged, long haired
woman in the foreground, and
the dark, evil mansion in the
back? Well, that's Bryn Mawr.

My night crawling was
interrupted only once, when
two crazy, black haired women