UNIVERSITY WIVES .
By JOHN R. TOWNSEND (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)
FOUR years ago the student from the wars returning with a wife and perhaps a couple of children was a figure who caught the public imagination. He was a rather overdrawn figure, perhaps, by the time the popular papers had finished with him. The ex-Desert Rat squatting in a Nissen hut, with a book On one knee and the baby on the other, was not really typical even then. Today the married student is a commonplace, and the newspapers have long turned elsewhere for feature material. But there are in fact more university wives now than there were in 1945. There are about 600 at Cambridge ; rather more at London, rather fewer at Oxford. Ex-servicemen are still coming up to the universities and ate still marrying. The undergraduate's wife living in a university town remains, and will remain for another three or four years at least, as a rather odd social phenomenon of the late 19405 and early 1950s.
University wives are a strange assortment. The wide differences in social background of undergraduates do not show very much in their own speech, dress or interests, but they show enormously in the choice of wives, who appear at first sight to range all the way from the Colonel's Lady to Judy O'Grady. All that can safely be predicted of the university wife is that she will be a totally different creature from the woman undergraduate. Rather older in years, and a good deal oldei in experience, coping with housing difficulties, a husband and possibly children, she does not reflect anything of the academic and collegiate atmosphere.
The undergraduate's wife is in an awkward position in that she does not really belong to either Town or Gown. She is not, usually, a member of the university, and has no part in most university activities. At the same time she is often looked upon with suspicion by townspeople, who are inclined to expect stand-offishness and affectation. These suspicions are usually unfair. The great majority of wives go to work, do their shopping and look after their homes. If they ever had any pretensions, they are in no position to maintain them. They have too many difficulties to grapple with. The greatest problem undoubtedly is the housing situation, which is particularly desperate in the university towns. At Cambridge accommodation in the town itself is expensive and very scarce, and many of the 600 married couples are scattered over the countryside. Some of them even live across the county border in Essex, and—though these instances are certainly not typical—there have recently been married undergraduates who lived in a converted NA.A.F.I. canteen and in a bus. Couples living miles away in the country are likely to feel especially cut off. The husband probably comes into Cambridge two or three times a week for lectures, and goes to his own college for nothing except supervision. He and his wife see little company during term, and often none at all during vacations. They have their counterparts at Oxford, and at London too, where the wilderness of suburbs takes the place of the Cambridgeshire countryside.
University wives are not only scattered ; they are usually hard up. The great majority of married undergraduates are dependent to some degree on Government grants. These grants would be quite adequate if the cost of rooms were reasonable, but of course it is not. Three or four guineas a week is the average charge for a couple of furnished rooms ; five or six guineas for a flat. It is not possible to pay such rents out of a maximum yearly grant of about £360, and in fact the wife, unless she has children to look after, almost invariably goes out to work. It can be a hard life. One girl who lives with her husband five miles out of Cambridge comes into town on one of the. half-dozen daily buses, does a full-time job in an office, and takes a lodger as well in order to pay the rent.
The average wife puts up with these difficulties more or less cheerfully. She knew what they were before she took them on. She has, after all, the great compensation of being with her husband, giving him moral support and sometimes help with his work. She learns quite a lot about such things as Trip's examinations and the
ways of the university world. Her chief grouse is probably the cold-shoulder official attitude of the university, which hardly bothers to acknowledge her existence and certainly doesn't take any interest in her problems. London University has its own housing bureau, which does its best to find accommodation for married students, but that is exceptional. At Cambridge the official attitude is that it is a privilege for undeigraduates to be allowed to bring their wives into residence at all and that the university is not in any way con- cerned with them. Some wives, however, have' had their existence recognised by their husbands' colleges to the extent of being asked to sign them in at night and countersign their certificates of residence.
The cold official reception, and the time and worry which are involved in house-hunting, are reasons why a proportion of under- graduates leave their wives behind them and live in college during term. Many of these couples have no home of their own at all ; the wife lives with her parents and her husband joins her during vacations. This is a solution which may be iatisfactory in some cases ; it depends upon the people involved. But wives who are resident in Cambridge condemn it unanimously. If house-hunting is a threat to marriage, they say, separation and living with relations are much greater ones. They would rather face the difficulties of married life than avoid them.
Husbands and wives agree that in practice marriage is no hindrance to academic work. Married men say they work more steadily and are less distracted by the more frivolous aspects of undergraduate life. They do not usually find it necessary to discontinue member- ship of university societies. They often wish, however, that societies in general were more willing to find ,a place for the undergraduate's wife. Some, such as the Union, are men's organisations anyway. But of the 187 other political, cultural and sporting clubs in Cam- bridge only a handful admit undergraduates' wives, and then only as an appendage to their husbands. There is no society in Cambridge which the wife can join in her own right. For such social difficul- ties nobody can be blamed. The truth is that the university way of life, with the college as its unit, is not suited to the needs of the married man, whose natural unit is the home. Home and college life could, of course, be combined if blocks of married quarters were built ; but the strong argument against this is that marriage is only a temporary feature of university life, and will have dwindled to very small proportions in a few years' time. Even if National Service continues, it may be assumed that most undergraduates will come into residence before they are twenty, and will take their degrees at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, instead of twenty- five or twenty-six as at present. There is not likely to be an appreciable marriage-rate.
Meanwhile, the age difference between the " normal " under- graduate and the ex-serviceman is accentuated by marriage. The single man, whose activities naturally enough are centred upon his own community, does not associate much with his married con- temporaries. He is inclined to look upon them as staid and middle- aged, and they to regard him as young and immature. This division, which is an unfortunate one, has been recognised and accepted at Cambridge, where undergraduates have founded a University Married Club. This is a social centre where married students and their wives can go for a talk, a drink or an evening's entertainment, and where, above all, they can meet other married couples. In the circumstances the formation of the club was a thoroughly practical move. But it was an admission that most married stuchints and their wives had failed to find a place of their own in university life. While other clubs cater for people with a community of interests, a married chili brings together people who have not necessarily anything in common except that they are all in the same boat.
It is to be hoped that time will solve the problem of the married student by removing it altogether, or reducing it to such small pro- portions that universities and colleges will be able to take it in hand. Meanwhile, though there are a few who are acutely lonely or out of their depth, most university wives are realistic and resourceful, and therefore happy. They accept their situation and make the most of it.
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