The Library of Pembroke College was the personal gift of Amelia S. Knight, Treasurer of the Rhode Island Society for the Collegiate Education of Women, to the Women’s College (later, Pembroke College) in 1897. Knight imagined the room’s design, provided funding, and hired the sculptor (local artist Hippolyte L. Hubert). The library’s friezes make it one of the most unusual rooms on campus.
These friezes epitomize the hopes and the limits of women’s education in the 1890s. Figures including Genius, Religion, Tragedy, Comedy, Navigation, Poetry, Literature, Sculpture, Navigation, Agriculture, Medicine, and many other careers line its four walls, highlighting the value of education and the many places it could take students. Yet the frieze over the hearth, depicting a woman raising her children, reminded students of the purpose of this education. The Providence Journal, reporting on the Hall’s dedication, assured readers that “This panel is the beginning and end of the series, the idea being conveyed that the greatest mission of any education is to fit the woman for her duties in the home.” If she failed at that, the Journal suggested, her education would fall “short of the highest” mission. (1)
This tension would remain at the heart of education at Pembroke for decades to come, as women faced dress codes and parietal rules that male students did not, were subjected to tests monitoring their posture and their weight, and took courses in home economics alongside the subjects symbolized by the other walls of the Library. (2) As the Pembroke College campus expanded the library was moved upstairs to room 305, where the collection remained until the merger between Pembroke and the men’s college in 1971. Today the room houses Gender and Sexuality Studies classes, including the Pembroke Seminar.
Special thanks to 2025-26 Nancy L. Buc ’65 LLD’94 hon Postdoctoral Fellow Eliana Chavkin for her invaluable research and commitment to documenting the history of the library friezes.
- “For Brown Women,” Providence Journal, Sept. 12, 1897, 18.
- Cindy Himes, “From Equity to Equality: Women's Athletics at Brown,” in Polly Welts Kaufman, ed., The Search For Equity: Women at Brown University, 1891-1991 (Brown University Press, 1991) 130-136.