“To my mind,” she later told Goodwin, “there was no one in the world like my father. Wherever he was, there was magic in the air.”Outgoing and quick of wit like her father, Rose enjoyed the political and social world of her father as much as he did. She was an ideal stand-in for her mother,who preferred the privacy and cloistered life of her own home and family.
Fitzgerald had high expectations in suitors for his eldest daughter. “My father,” Rose wrote many years later, “had extravagant notions of my beauty, grace, wit, and charm.” As she grew older, “these delusions deepened. I suppose no father really thinks any man is good enough for his daughter.” He was, she concluded, “a hopeless case.”Rose complained that her father refused to allow her to attend school dances or to socialize with boys and young men. In her mind, her father was excessively conservative and overly protective.Once the family returned from Old Orchard Beach that fall of 1906, dating posed considerable challenges for Rose and Joe. Undaunted by Honey Fitz’s rules, the young couple would remain committed to each other, finding ways to see each other without her father’s knowing.
Rose at this time was determined to participate in the burgeoning freedoms available in the modernizing new century. Women were moving into the public sphere in droves; they were working in business, retail, health care, law, social work, education, the arts, and more. Educational opportunities for women were expanding, social mores were relaxing, and women’s political power was growing. Though lacking the vote, women organized—often through women’s clubs, unions, and progressive reform groups—to lobby for legislation affecting wages, working conditions, urban politics, education, and public health.
Rose’s aspirations included college, and living in Boston made the pursuit of higher education a possibility. Home to several secular universities and colleges, Boston offered middle-class and some working-class women educational and professional training not available in many other parts of the country. At sixteen, however, Rose was a little young to enter college immediately afterher graduation, so she decided to take a postgraduate year in preparatory classes at Dorchester High School to further groom her for the rigors of college.
By the time Rose was contemplating college, Catholic institutions of higher learning for women were still few. Convent schools had long been the standard, though most did not confer college degrees. The Catholic Church in the United States had just begun its commitment to establishing private Catholic colleges and universities, but they were for men exclusively. Secular, Protestant, and Methodist colleges in the Boston area, including Simmons, Harvard, Wellesley, and Boston University, all accepted women either directly or in annexed institutions, like Radcliffe at Harvard, educating women in mostly segregated classrooms.
Even a separate Catholic primary and secondary school system was slow in coming. Frustrated by the discrimination and bullying that Catholic students were facing every day in Boston’s public schools, the local Catholic archbishop, John Williams, began establishing Catholic parochial schools throughout the region starting in the 1880s.Such bold maneuvers by the Catholic Church, Boston’s Brahmins imagined, threatened the very foundations of civil society and undermined cherished Puritan values. Protestant denominations had long dominated private schools, but New England’s Yankee and Protestant elite had also defined public-school education through well-delineated curriculum standards for more than two centuries. How could this elite control the Irish population if it could not control who was teaching Irish children?
Once the process started, however, mostly through small schools attached to local churches, the number of Catholic schools for children in Boston grew rapidly. The quality of
Fitzgerald had high expectations in suitors for his eldest daughter. “My father,” Rose wrote many years later, “had extravagant notions of my beauty, grace, wit, and charm.” As she grew older, “these delusions deepened. I suppose no father really thinks any man is good enough for his daughter.” He was, she concluded, “a hopeless case.”Rose complained that her father refused to allow her to attend school dances or to socialize with boys and young men. In her mind, her father was excessively conservative and overly protective.Once the family returned from Old Orchard Beach that fall of 1906, dating posed considerable challenges for Rose and Joe. Undaunted by Honey Fitz’s rules, the young couple would remain committed to each other, finding ways to see each other without her father’s knowing.
Rose at this time was determined to participate in the burgeoning freedoms available in the modernizing new century. Women were moving into the public sphere in droves; they were working in business, retail, health care, law, social work, education, the arts, and more. Educational opportunities for women were expanding, social mores were relaxing, and women’s political power was growing. Though lacking the vote, women organized—often through women’s clubs, unions, and progressive reform groups—to lobby for legislation affecting wages, working conditions, urban politics, education, and public health.
Rose’s aspirations included college, and living in Boston made the pursuit of higher education a possibility. Home to several secular universities and colleges, Boston offered middle-class and some working-class women educational and professional training not available in many other parts of the country. At sixteen, however, Rose was a little young to enter college immediately afterher graduation, so she decided to take a postgraduate year in preparatory classes at Dorchester High School to further groom her for the rigors of college.
By the time Rose was contemplating college, Catholic institutions of higher learning for women were still few. Convent schools had long been the standard, though most did not confer college degrees. The Catholic Church in the United States had just begun its commitment to establishing private Catholic colleges and universities, but they were for men exclusively. Secular, Protestant, and Methodist colleges in the Boston area, including Simmons, Harvard, Wellesley, and Boston University, all accepted women either directly or in annexed institutions, like Radcliffe at Harvard, educating women in mostly segregated classrooms.
Even a separate Catholic primary and secondary school system was slow in coming. Frustrated by the discrimination and bullying that Catholic students were facing every day in Boston’s public schools, the local Catholic archbishop, John Williams, began establishing Catholic parochial schools throughout the region starting in the 1880s.Such bold maneuvers by the Catholic Church, Boston’s Brahmins imagined, threatened the very foundations of civil society and undermined cherished Puritan values. Protestant denominations had long dominated private schools, but New England’s Yankee and Protestant elite had also defined public-school education through well-delineated curriculum standards for more than two centuries. How could this elite control the Irish population if it could not control who was teaching Irish children?
Once the process started, however, mostly through small schools attached to local churches, the number of Catholic schools for children in Boston grew rapidly. The quality of
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