Boardinghouse Guests: Teachers
“Their teacher was a gaunt red-faced spinster, with fierce glaring eyes… Her name was Miss Groody” Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
Teachers played an important role in Thomas Wolfe’s life and more than a few found their place in his fiction. Bessie Ethelwyn Moody moved with her family to Asheville in 1888 and attended the Orange Street School before entering the Greensboro State Normal School. She returned to Asheville and began teaching 3rd grade at the Orange Street School in Fall of 1899. By 1910, she was teaching 5th grade when Thomas Wolfe was in her class. She never married and would later be immortalized as Miss Groody in Look Homeward, Angel.
During the years following 1906 when Julia Wolfe operated the Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse, she often rented beds to teachers travelling with friends or family. This likely pleased Julia who could tell stories about her own experience teaching in a one-room schoolhouse before she was married in 1885. “I thought myself mighty lucky if I got my board and twenty dollars a month,” said Eliza Gant in Look Homeward, Angel. By 1900, approximately three out of every four teachers in America were women. The administration of schools was reserved for men who rigidly controlled teacher jobs. During the nineteenth century the idea developed that women were more suited to teaching than men. Teaching was considered an extension of mothering. With yet few opportunities to work outside the home, teaching allowed women an opportunity to possess a sense of purpose and be independent. A teaching career was thought in some communities to be an acceptable alternative to marriage.
Like Julia Wolfe had accomplished in 1878 at the Asheville Female College, in the succeeding decades increasing numbers of women availed themselves of a chance to further their education beyond grammar school at a normal school. Normal schools, many organized just for women, were the early version of the teacher’s college. By 1910 normal schools began to transition from two-year programs to four-year colleges or departments in larger liberal-arts institutions. Teachers completing these programs could hope to work in a school on a three-month contract, earning about 70 to 90 dollars per month. Hiring, however, might depend on who you knew in the community. As young women increasingly embraced the teaching profession, they would also quickly discover the job entailed many difficulties, and strict social expectations. The work frequently included sweeping and scrubbing classroom floors, cleaning the blackboard daily, arriving early mornings to light the stove, and maintaining a fire throughout the day. The nature of the classroom varied depending on the area of the country. Countless rural classrooms still operated in one room where students ranged in age and ability. In this period urban schools were challenged by the growing influx of non-English speaking immigrant children. Whether rural, or urban, conditions were not ideal. Materials were inadequate, classrooms generally overcrowded, the spaces were poorly lit and poorly ventilated. Rote memorization of material by students and reciting after the teacher was still the most common teaching tool.
A closer look at the teachers staying at Julia Wolfe’s Old Kentucky Home reveals much about the job during this period. Out of a sample of two dozen identified, only two were men, only four were married, and one a widow. Among the single women many remained single or did not marry until later in life leaving the workplace to become a housewife. Often single women could not marry during their teaching contract, and married women were often barred from the classroom by administrators. Women with children were also denied a place in schools, since the dominant belief was that they belonged at home. Teachers were discouraged from being seen in the company of men in their communities. Riding with single men in automobiles, loitering at the local soda fountain, considered scandalous. Teachers were frequently subjected to strict dress codes, such as the requirement of wearing dresses with two petticoats, no shorter that two inches above the ankles, no bright colors, no hair dye, and absolutely no smoking allowed in public. Perhaps a summer getaway at an Asheville boarding house was a celebrated occasion for teachers wishing to escape the watchful eyes of the hometown crowd.
Find more about our early teachers here: https://www.thewesterncarolinajournalist.com/2016/05/04/the-history-of-women-as-teachers/
