© 1997 Lawrence University Press
Conclusion
This history of Milwaukee-Downer College has sought to show that the essential character of the college was well-established by 1921. Its 19th-century background had laid the foundations for the development of this institution as a college of liberal arts that, like its counterparts in other regions, aimed to build Christian character in its students and teach them the value of service to society.
Milwaukee-Downer was also, historically and by its own choice, a college for women only, dedicated to equipping women with the homemaking, teaching, and nursing skills required to perform effectively in their own separate sphere. Inherent in the very "personality" of the school was the belief that women's own institutions provided an excellent context for teaching them that the social roles for which they were being trained were as important as the social roles of men that they complemented.
While the college overtly expressed its devotion to strengthening the position of women in their own sphere, it tacitly devoted itself to exercising social control over the women who were its students. Milwaukee-Downer perceived itself as serving in loco parentis. The college attempted to exercise social control, not only through explicit rules and regulations but also through its use of student government and college rituals and traditions. The desire for control was also an important factor in the college's promotion of the residential -- as opposed to commuter -- experience for its students.
Other aspects of the liberal arts education, however, produced a discrepancy between what the college thought it was doing and what it actually was doing. While its intention was to exercise social control, for various reasons it actually was fostering independence among the students. For the fact was, intentions notwithstanding, that an all-female institution, in which there was no competition from males, placed all leadership positions in the hands of women, and the all-female, single faculty modeled self-sufficiency and independence. The curriculum fostered independence, too; its vocational aspect appeared to favor the pursuit of careers, and its liberal arts aspect taught thinking skills that tended to limit the extent to which students remained willing to conform.
The heart of the matter is that the women's college, whether it liked it or not, whether it admitted it or not, played a role in producing women who would be advocates of what has come to be identified as 20th-century feminism. Yes, the college did attempt to communicate the importance of women operating skillfully within their own sphere, only to have students tacitly reject that sphere by following the role models and using the thinking skills that the college gave them. And yes, the college sanctioned the entrance of its alumnae into jobs appropriate for women beyond the limits of the home, only to have them further breach the sphere by thinking of this experience not as women's work but as serious participation in the world outside traditional women's boundaries. In essence, the separate sphere was undermined by college women's actual experience; the separate sphere ideology that stressed the complementarity of women and men had to give way to a feminist ideology that stressed women's independence from men. These were indeed the factors accounting for the emergence of the "Milwaukee-Downer Woman."