Mrs. Yale

When Novelist John Hersey (Yale '36) wrote his 15-year class report (TIME, Sept. 8), he proved one thing about Yalemen: they are successful often to the point of glamour. But what about their wives? To answer that question, the Yale Alumni Magazine commissioned Agnes Rogers, an editor of the Reader's Digest and wife of Frederick Lewis (Only Yesterday) Allen* of Harper's Magazine, to dip into the record of the class of '37. Last week, Editor Rogers submitted her report: Mrs. Yale, she found, looks less glamorous in statistics, but she has seen her duty and she does it.

Though three out of four of the group questioned went to college, scarcely one of them now has the time to display her learning. Today, at 35, Mrs. Median Yale has 2.3 children, puts in a good ten hours a day at her housework. She is apparently allowed only one part-time maid one day a week, spends a modest $325 a year for her clothes and $40 more for "personal beautification." Politically, she is apt to be Republican, usually voting just the way her husband does. In whatever spare time she has, she gets through about twelve books a year.

Concludes Editor Rogers: "To one who recalls the long feminist battle over the right of a woman to 'lead her own life,' it is remarkable to find such an intelligent and lively group . . . embracing so nearly unanimously a modern version of the pre-feminist pattern."

*Harvard '12.

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