ABSTRACT
When Barbara Egger Lennon (Barbe) stepped in front of her first class in 1902, she still may have hoped to enter college in a year’s time, but that goal proved untenable. Instead, after two years at Eldorado, she moved to a slightly larger school thirty miles west of Bloomington in Hopedale, Illinois. Barbe originally may have hoped to pursue higher education after a short stint at teaching, but her hints of a hopeful romance reveal that she perhaps, like society, now presumed a different goal. The early twentieth century offered women slightly expanded professional and personal opportunities, such as teaching, but society still tended to view these opportunities as merely an interlude between student and wife. The Hopedale School Board had wanted Barbe to return as a teacher in the fall of 1905, but she also received an offer from the Bloomington School Board. Barbe was an avid window-shopper, so she especially enjoyed the “style show” each spring.
