Delphic Days

Abstract Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, is only ro6 miles from Davenport, but for Susan the distance must have seemed much further, because her move took her out of a familiar environment and launched her into a world no longer circumscribed by the peccadilloes of Davenport society or the preoccupations of her own family. Distance may, in fact, have prompted her decision. It would have been more natural for her to select the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, closer to her home and less expensive, but instead she chose private Drake University, founded in 1881. She entered as a junior, waving two years because of her Latin certificate, and in two years more she received a bachelor of philosophy degree. She was an excellent student and took a rigorous program, including Greek, French grammar and literature, history, English literature, ethics, Biblical literature, psychology, and philosophy in her first year. For her to have gone away to college at all was an unusual step; to take such a curriculum was even more extraordinary. Most young women who wanted postsecondary education opted to remain in Davenport, where there were a number of institutions whose curriculum was directed toward turning out women prepared to take up their places as wives and mothers in society. Elizabeth McCullough Bray, in a series of articles on the literary life of Davenport, published in the Davenport Democrat in 1929, describes the rare woman who broke the mold and sought more academic pursuits, perhaps with Susan in mind: “This girl brought home a bachelor’s degree.