Thus, Radcliffe women were faced with frustrating problems. "My main criticism of Radcliffe in the '40s was that no one ever asked you what you were doing after college," Bartle said. "They simply assumed you would get a job for a while after college, but then you would marry and have five children," she said.

"There are some women who were and are very capable but who have never been able to use those capabilities. They were told marriage was it," Bartle said.

Bartle added that Radcliffe women had always tended to be liberated, but in a contemplative, perceptive way. "Radcliffe women would reject the more hysterical, radical aspects of women's liberation," she said.

Even the more staunch supporters of women's liberation agreed that the essence of choice should be the overriding concern in any woman's life--that a woman who chooses to stay at home with children should not be made to feel guilty.

"I personally don't understand the controversy. If women have a career and stay home, they shouldn't be made to feel inadequate and guilty," Abelle Dinkowitz Mason said. "I've heard some women say they felt they let Radcliffe down. I just don't hold with saying that one thing is superior to another. There should be alternatives provided for everyone."

Nevertheless, Mason added that being a housewife and mother was a "negative virture" for graduates in the '40s. "A woman had to choose between career and family," Mason said. "But there was something slightly immoral about not having a family. A woman who raised her children well