This page focuses on how food broadly can be used to understand socio-economic status at Wellesley based on evidence from the College Hall Dig and the Wellesley College Archives. Our subpages deal with the way student taste influenced the food, how food was used to build community across social classes, and the cost that community had. In all of these, food is the lens through which we see the socioeconomics of Wellesley's past.
What exactly did the students eat anyway? Heavily influenced by Wellesley's New England palate and their own lavish standards at home, seafood and meats seemed to take a huge portion in the diet of students. This is reflected in the foody finds from the College Hall dig.
From this 1908 Macy's catalogue, we can see a steep difference between devilled meats and our hefty boned ham. The cost on the left is per can, while on the right it is per dozen. The 1/2 Devilled Ham Can costed $0.22 per can, approximately $6.23 today. By contrast, Whole Boned Ham Can No.1 costed $0.83, which has the purchasing power of $23.49 today. Talk about some expensive ham!
Though there was no entry for canned sardines in the Macy's catalogue, sardine paste made an appearance at $0.39 per can, $11.04 today.
The types of food favoured by Wellesley students is a reflection of their elevated status and refined tastes. Besides their own cheeky, private canned snacks, the foods offered by the college and their way of serving it upholds this image of class and sophistication. Below we will explore how the methods of serving this food contributed to the preppy Wellesley image.
The ways that students ate reveals just as much about life at Wellesley as the food itself. Modern Wellesley dining halls have students mostly eating together at round tables, serving themselves from a variety of different mass-produced foods and using generic plastic plates and cups. Because on campus students are all on the same meal plan, administration hopes that every student is well fed, regardless of economic status. These dining halls are meant to be a place of gathering, not exclusion. Dining in College Hall was a little different.
The tables in College Hall, unlike the round tables more common in the dining rooms today, were long and rectangular, a more traditional and formal set-up that preserves some hierarchy at dinner with the "head" of the table. The table setting is also much more formal than we are used to, pre-set for students with a white tablecloth and fine dining ware. Yet there is also an element of uniformity to it, as all students sit in the same nice chairs with the same nice plates eating the same nice food. Eating together at these tables, the student body as a whole is elevated to the same level of finery at meals.
In contrast with the plain white plates of today, there were dishes specifically for Wellesley. The coloring is the signature Wellesley white and blue. On this one plate, the college is put on a delicate ribbon on the middle. It makes identity of the college tied to this fine dining experience.
This pitcher is a perfect example of the image Wellesley is trying to create in the dining hall. The Wedgwood style is extremely fancy and sophisticated, while still working in Wellesley colors. It shows young women in classically-inspired poses, like the women at the table engaging in their studies. It connects the wealth of this pottery with the their reason for being at the school: learning.
The dining room of College Hall projected an image of sophistication. Together, all students dined in a more fine manner. As they shared meals at these tables, they were also sharing ideas about what it meant to be at Wellesley. The message here, supported by the material the college provided for them to eat with, was that Wellesley was a place of wealth and higher society, where all students dined like proper women.
College provided-grub was clearly not the end-all-be-all of foodways for Wellesley students. So besides sardines and oysters, what were students paying for? By sifting through advertisements in the Wellesley News, we found a few through lines: easily stored snacks, hot beverages, and sweet treats. For more on the division and overlap between student and institutional food preferences, see the Tastes page.
The dining hall at College Hall created an image of a Wellesley where every student had a certain level of wealth, made of part of fine dining. But on students on their own show a wider range of socio-economic statuses in their personal preferences. In public, they all ate off fancy plates at well-set tables. In private, they drank tea and ate sardines, bought chocolates and deviled ham. The diversity of the social and economic statuses of students and the way that it was expressed in food is explored further in the subpages.
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