At least at the beginning, Gina Barreca’s account of Dartmouth College was NOT what I was expecting. While privilege was as important to elite colleges then as before in the 20s, I expected some men, but most importantly the women to be exceptional intellectual candidates as they asserted themselves and proved their worth in a system hostile to their ambitions. To me this would create a sense of solidarity and companionship among the women. Instead Barreca is isolated and resentful of almost every other woman on campus.
But is this the real issue? With the words of my Interp professor ringing in my ears as I read…“Then I realized Ursula Le Guin is not a feminist. She is a humanist”…I considered the possibility that while Regina Barreca calls herself a feminist on page two, this quality developed further into her college and adult career. The dominant criticism and attitude at the beginning of the book promotes one female—not any others, and vilifies the rest of the upper-class (wealthy) population. While the narrative focuses on observations such as “Perched on their family money as solidly as hens on eggs” Barreca battles the system of old money and patronage, not of patriarchy.
After a while as she finds a supportive group of friends, her resentment subsides. As she learns not to “hold onto a guy who believes there’s only one way to pronounce a word,” becoming more comfortable with herself, the classist tension in the narrative relaxes and becomes less important. School too becomes superseded by character development, just as in each other novel.

The second thing that struck me (the first being how money and class were still taller barriers than gender) was the focus on sex at the end of the book, particularly those explicit passages defiantly placed whether I think they fit her narrative or not. In a more conventional plot structure the end of the book would be reserved for her triumph over the system and the odds. The longer accounts of dates and conversations could have been set anywhere. They seem unrelated to Dartmouth. But maybe I was wrong in the beginning. Maybe feminism doesn’t require unity and solidarity among all of the Dartmouth women. The confidence and strength expressed--if not always in her actions in the bluntness of each passage—are evidence of her personal growth and indicative of success. Individuality can be a feminist value as well. And while her relationships could have happened anywhere, they fit into a longer progression of self-expression and individuality that spans from pre to post college. Starting with the teenage Gina who “counted how many horns beeped” at her and quickly changed her dress after being confronted by the conservative dignity of the richer girls.
I believe Eumie correctly identifies ‘control’ as a major motive and motif at the end. In a still male-dominated world, Gina arrives at a position to decide whether she wants to sleep with a guy. She no longer associates with the self-absorbed Yales of the world or throws herself unashamedly at her much older professors. But more importantly the feminist character at the end certainly wouldn’t think ending up a housewife, unemployed but without homework and deadlines, is a “lucky” future.