Marion Talbot

Economist

• Born: July 31, 1858
• Birthplace: Thun, Switzerland
• Died: October 20, 1948
• Place of death: Chicago, Illinois

American sociologist and educator

Talbot was a leading authority on women’s higher education, an author, the first dean of women in a coeducational institution, a cofounder of the American Association of University Women, and a charter faculty member at the University of Chicago. She was also a significant inspiration for women in the fields of sociology and home economics, or family and consumer science.

Areas of achievement Education, sociology

Early Life

Marion Talbot (MEHR-ee-uhn TAHL-buht) was born in Switzerland, while her American parents were visiting that country. Her father, Israel Tisdale Talbot, practiced homeopathic medicine and served as the first dean of the medical school of Boston University. Her mother, Emily Fairbanks Talbot, was a leader in the struggle for women’s higher education and women’s work in the social sciences. She was active in establishing the Girls’ Latin School in Boston, an endeavor she began partly to secure a forum for her daughter’s training. The Talbots of Boston were located at the center of the city’s intellectual and cultural life. Talbot, the eldest of their six children, was always encouraged by her parents in her advocacy of women’s rights in higher education.

After graduating from the Girls’ Latin School, Talbot was admitted conditionally to Boston University, where she earned a B.A. degree in 1880. After several years of social life and travel, she wanted more than the traditional life that was open to women at that time. Probably at the urging of a family acquaintance and one of the founders of human ecology, Ellen H. Richards, Talbot was encouraged to study “domestic science.” After several years of sporadic study, she completed a B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1888.

In 1881-1882, Talbot, her mother, Richards, and Alice Freeman Palmer, an early president of Wellesley College, cofounded the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (later renamed the American Association of University Women, or AAUW). This organization spearheaded opportunities for educated women in the academy and in society. Talbot was its first secretary and was its president from 1895 to 1897. In 1890, Talbot was appointed an instructor in domestic science at Wellesley College (when Palmer was president).

Life’s Work

In March, 1892, Palmer met with W. R. Harper, president of the University of Chicago, who offered her the position of dean of the women’s colleges. Palmer wanted to keep her presidency at Wellesley and work part-time at Chicago, so she recommended Talbot as her full-time assistant. With considerable anticipation mixed with fear, Talbot joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1892 as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology (and headed the “woman’s department” within sociology called “household administration”). Shortly thereafter, she became the first full-time women’s dean in a coeducational institution.

Talbot was included within the structure, teaching, and practice of sociology at the University of Chicago as the head of “women’s work” throughout the institution. In 1895, she became an associate editor of the American Journal of Sociology, a position she held until her retirement from Chicago in 1925. Talbot critiqued “women’s work” in sociology and provided a “woman’s perspective” for the most important journal in this discipline.

Talbot wrote in two major areas: the sociology of the home and the sociology of education. Talbot’s study of the home was tied to its material reality, from its basic sanitary functioning to its aesthetic creation as an environment in which one lived. Thus, Talbot’s pioneering work in women’s education was complemented by her scholarly study of the application of science to the home.

Talbot’s study of the home was sparked by her association with Ellen H. Richards. Together, they edited Home Sanitation: A Manual for Housekeepers (1887) and wrote Food as a Factor in Student Life (1884), books that are now difficult to find and are outdated as sources of factual information. They were, however, crucial beginning steps in the study of nutrition and home economics, or family and consumer science. The Modern Household (1912), written with Talbot’s former student Sophonisba Breckinridge, is an introductory text intended to help housewives and college students adapt to modern social changes affecting the home. The book covers a variety of topics, ranging from the mundane but important care of the house to ethics in consumerism and the community.

Anyone interested in the turbulent, innovative founding days of the University of Chicago will find Talbot’s autobiography, More than Lore (1936), a delight to read. Talbot is forthright in her statements about discrimination against women professionals at the university. Unfortunately, this book, like Talbot’s others, is difficult to find and is out of print, so a brief summary is presented here. Talbot’s autobiography documents gender segregation at Chicago in 1902. Some professors wanted to “protect” young men against “dangerous” women. Talbot’s battle against this policy reflects her institutional struggle for coeducation and her bittersweet humor. Fortunately, the segregationist stance was never very successful, and it soon faded away.

Talbot’s most important chapter on sexism at Chicago is called “The Weaker Sex.” In it, she recounts women’s long struggle to enter institutions of higher learning. Chicago was one of the few institutions that accepted women as graduate students in 1892, but few well-qualified women were hired over the next twenty-five years.

Although Talbot was a powerful administrator, her intellectual leadership was severely limited at the University of Chicago. Her continuing battles to make a department with its own funding, staff, journal, fellowships, library, and intellectual legitimacy are outlined in her personal papers at that institution, but this fascinating story has yet to be published.

Talbot was a charter member of the American Sociological Association and an early participant in the Lake Placid Conferences in Home Economics. She was also active in the American Historical Association, the American Public Health Association, the Labor Legislation Association, and the National Federation of Women’s Clubs. In 1904, Talbot was awarded an honorary doctor of law degree by Cornell College in Iowa.

Talbot lived a woman-centered existence. She was surrounded in her youth by notable women such as Emily Talbot, Julia Ward Howe, and Louisa May Alcott. She then worked with Richards, Palmer, and the social settlement leader Jane Addams. She trained and worked for many decades with Breckinridge, with whom she shared her life. For years, they lived in women’s dormitories as leaders, friends, and bulwarks against a world hostile to educated women. Talbot built institutional structures for women and carved a place for them in the academy. She helped dozens and dozens of female professionals find their first jobs.

Talbot continued her work as dean of women at Chicago until her retirement in 1925. In 1927, she served as acting president of Constantinople Women’s College in Turkey for a year, and she did so again in 1931 and 1932. In 1948, Talbot’s health and fortunes changed rapidly. Breckinridge died in July, 1948, and her death was a severe blow to Talbot. Within four months, Talbot died as well, at the end of a very productive life.

Significance

Talbot’s administrative innovations at the University of Chicago and her analyses of women’s work in that institution are major resources for scholars studying the history of women’s higher education, especially in sociology. Her policies on women’s roles in universities laid the groundwork for similar programs throughout the country. Although she was not a radical, she consistently made decisions favoring gender equality.

Concrete precedents favoring women are detailed in the administrative reports that Talbot made annually at the University of Chicago. In one report, for example, Talbot cited a number of statistics relating to women’s low faculty status and the superior achievements of women students compared to those of men at Chicago. More women than men were also graduated Phi Beta Kappa. Female doctors (approximately fifteen of the graduates) were also very competitive in honorary awards and achievements. Women at Chicago built a sense of camaraderie through their participation in two organizations: The Club of Women Fellows for graduate women and The Women’s Union for undergraduate women. These groups helped young women build social and professional networks when many people believed that women should not receive college degrees.

Despite Talbot’s fights for women’s equality, she believed that women should be “ladies,” polite and well-bred, and that a higher education prepared women to be better wives and mothers. In this way, she supported the traditional roles of women. Her writings are interspersed, however, with an appreciation of women’s contributions to society and the difficulty of managing a home, and these analyses sound similar to modern writings on housewives and housework. Most clearly, her critiques of discrimination against women in academia are still relevant and accurate.

Talbot was an immensely powerful woman who saw many of her dreams fulfilled during her lifetime. She helped establish the AAUW, with more than a hundred thousand members at the time of her death. She saw women enter universities and college campuses across the country and lived to see deans of women working on more than a thousand campuses. She was one of the recognized founders of home economics and had a pivotal role in the lives of early women in sociology.

Bibliography

Deegan, Mary Jo. “Marion Talbot, 1858-1947.” In Women in Sociology: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991. A scholarly biography that includes an extensive bibliography on Talbot and related scholarship.

Fish, Virginia K. “More Than Lore: Marion Talbot and Her Role in the Founding Years of the University of Chicago.” International Journal of Women’s Studies 8, no. 3 (May/June, 1985): 228-249. This is an excellent analysis of Talbot’s autobiography and her central role at the University of Chicago. Because More than Lore is difficult to find in libraries, this article allows more people to learn about the book.

Fitzpatrick, Ellen. Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Talbot and some of the women she trained are discussed here. Examines the Progressive Era and how these women affected the time.

Lengermann, Patricia Madoo, and Gillian Niebrugge, eds. The Women Founders Sociology and Social Theory, 1830-1930: A Text/Reader. 1998. New ed. Waveland Press, 2007. An insightful study of the often overlooked women who impacted sociology and social theory in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Includes a chapter on sociology at the University of Chicago under Talbot’s leadership.

Palmer, George Herbert. The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908. George Palmer was the husband of Alice Freeman Palmer, and his biography is particularly informative regarding Talbot’s era and one of her closest friends. The biography refers to Talbot in several places.

Rosenberg, Rosalind. Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982. This is a fine account of Talbot’s early life and family and of her work in social science. Other women in the social sciences from Talbot’s era are also discussed.

Talbot, Marion. The Education of Women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1910. This book describes the educational opportunities available to women in the United States in 1910. Talbot’s defense of social hygiene, exercise, and training for rational thinking were “daring” ideas in her day.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. More than Lore: Reminiscences of Marion Talbot, Dean of Women, the University of Chicago, 1892-1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936. Although this book is hard to find, it is one of the most important books on women’s entry into higher education and life at the University of Chicago from 1892 to 1925.

Talbot, Marion, and Lois Kimball M. Rosenberry. The History of the American Association of University Women, 1881-1931. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931. A detailed account of the committees, work, and goals of the association that Talbot cofounded. It is a gold mine of information on the work and networks of early women professionals.

Wright, Gwendolyn. Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 1873-1913. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. This excellent analysis of the ideal home and its physical construction is an important resource for understanding Talbot’s environment and role in the exciting world of Chicago architecture. Wright also explains Talbot’s work with Ellen Richards and some professors at the University of Chicago.