Book Review: When Patty Went to College by Jean Webster

                                                

Jean Webster published her first novel, “When Patty Went to College” in 1903. Like her uncontestably more famous “Daddy Long Legs” (1912), her debut novel was based on her life and experiences in a women’s college. The book is a collection of loosely connecting stories about Patty Wyatt’s senior year, beginning with her first day in her new dorm and ending a few weeks before graduation. As “Daddy Long Legs” introduced me to Jean Webster’s body of writing, I admit it was rather difficult not to draw comparisons between the two novels, and particularly, between Judy Abbott and Patty Wyatt.

Patty Wyatt could have been a politician had she been born in a more modern time. She can be described as charismatic and imperturbable, carefree and creative, lazy and intelligent, fun-loving and reckless. Throughout the book, in spite of Patty’s misadventures, clever antics, and pranks on her fellow classmates to entertain herself, she is well liked by her friends and faculty. As Cathy Fair tells her in the denouement to the final story, “I’ve always liked you, Patty,—everybody does,—but I don’t believe I’ve ever appreciated you, and I’m glad to find it out before we leave college.” She can be a trifle judgmental, cuts church, and can hardly be moved to study more than she absolutely has to, and yet, whenever Patty is confronted between the right choice and the easy way out, she displays a strong sense of morality and honesty in spite of the consequences. I like her character. Patty is easygoing and yet proactive; you just know that if she were the recipient of an anonymous benefactor to study at college, she wouldn’t be inclined to send monthly letters to her mysterious figure. No, Patty Wyatt would have tracked him down and pulled aside the curtains to reveal Jervis Pendelton before her first letter even arrived in his mailbox. Judy’s story is one sprawling adventure spread over her collection of chronicling letters; Patty’s story is a collection of all these tiny adventures that compose one book. I wonder if she drank coffee.

The book lacked cohesion in its narrative. Each story was a snapshot of life from the beginning to end of her last year in college and yet I couldn’t help but feel like it was missing a unifying theme or oscillating purpose. Some of the stories concentrated on Patty’s dilemmas involving owning up to her faults and confessing; these pieces connected in their purpose of showing Patty’s gradual maturity.

In context, the relatively heavy-handed moralizing in some of Patty’s tales is to be expected. This was a novel written in the early 20^th century for children and adolescents. It could have been far worst. Traces of Webster’s first-wave feminism shine through and are as strong as they are in her later writing. She explores contemporary issues such as women’s rights, women’s education, socialism, and gender roles with an air of a bygone era’s lightheartedness. On the whole, I would classify this as lighter than “Daddy” or “Dear Enemy,” which I find to be Webster’s most serious endeavor. I liked this novel on its own merit. The glimpse into life of a bygone time and place, into the world that Jean Webster occupied for years, was worth the read.