Meditation on a Photo: Aurelia Plath's Ankles of Clay

Front row, third from left. Her Winthrop High graduating class had 146 students.

Aurelia Schober in this yearbook photo from 1924 -- she's a high-school senior, 18 -- differs from her classmates in height and build and is the worst-dressed of the lot, her faded cap-sleeved cotton dress, with a decorative bow and ribbon so it's not a housedress or what her mother called a "wash dress," a vivid contrast to her schoolmates' woolen sweaters and skirts. They're dressed for autumn or winter, yet wear pretty shoes while "Ri-Ri's" oxfords look too tight. Her ankles will always be a weak point, broken twice (when she was 10, and again at 21) then repeatedly twisted or injured. Ankles of clay. Or maybe ill-fitting shoes.

Readymade clothes didn't (and still don't) accommodate tall women, so Aurelia wore whatever fit. In this photo she looks like what she is: eldest daughter of immigrants with two younger siblings and a breadwinner father who in 1924 was literally walking Boston's streets seeking jobs, a former headwaiter reduced to taking intermittent or seasonal employment. He had already chosen for Aurelia a two-year business college that would train her to make her own money. Her parents would never recover from her father's underemployment and later depended on Aurelia for housing.

In the photo Aurelia stands tall, doesn't look unhappy or self-conscious or shunned. She was the First Rebuttal speaker on her women's debating team and a star at school -- always, always, a top honor student. Freshman year, the yearbook's "Who's Who" picked her out and said: "Aurelia Schober doesn't hesitate to swallow every morsel of knowledge to be found." Sophomore year, when they knew she could take a joke: "A. Schober doesn't swallow the books much. She has brains in her feet, even. Just think!" The 1924 Winthrop High School senior class "prediction" said:

". . . one of [a classmate's] planes [is] making its daily trip to Florida. Seated at the extreme left is George B., world-famed violinist. . . in the third seat is Cecelia D., a school teacher . . . The young aviatrix is Aurelia Schober, who, not able to get seated comfortably because of her height, stood during the entire trip. Aurelia is now President of Schober Soapy Soap Flakes, Inc."

The future Aurelia piloted the plane and CEO'd an industrial firm! Which female in your own graduating class compares? (On the yearbook staff, Aurelia might have written this "prediction" herself.) It seems that the Schober family was poor but clean, as the trope goes. Aurelia wore to school a shapeless over-washed unseasonable thing without publicly pouting because her parents, as immigrant parents do, scolded her to mind her schoolwork and be at the top of her class because they'd sacrificed their whole lives for her and she should be grateful for any shoes and clothes she got.

Aurelia had friends and always did. The local newspaper records that she attended a classmate's quite elegant tea party, but never that she gave one. For certain of my readers I must point out that in 1924 females holding hands or linking arms with besties was not gay.

Photos of Aurelia -- fairly rare -- show that except for the first years of her marriage to Otto Plath she wore unflattering or misfit clothing, often secondhand. That for years she wore a ratty coat "like some teachers you'll see," a witness has confirmed. In her late 60s Aurelia, retired from teaching, made some money from the work of her famously dead writer daughter and was photographed in suits that fit and pearl earrings, her incorrigibly wavy hair tamed with a permanent. The best she could do in high school was a hairband.

Aurelia Schober, later Plath, as her class salutatorian gave a speech about "Loyalty" (a mind-blowing document to be discussed in a future post). Unwillingly, and unprepared for it, "Ri-Ri" became the most famous alumna of them all.

["146 students," Winthrop Sun, 14 June 1924.]

Aurelia and the Great Equality Debate: Winthrop High School, 1924

Debating team, Winthrop High School yearbook 1924, p. 58

 

Among the first four girls to break Winthrop High's debate team's gender barrier was senior Aurelia Schober [front row, third from left]. A packed auditorium heard the boys debate the girls about whether female teachers should be paid as much as males. The school yearbook, The Echo, narrates:

By reason of the fact that we of the class of '24 have been as radical in all our enterprises as one could reasonably expect from students who want something different, it is not at all remarkable to note that the debating team has also been changed somewhat and is now co-ed.

 

The girls made their debut, and debut it was, for they completely took the boys off their feet with their eloquence and ability that had previously been a joke among the opposite and superior (?) sex, on Friday evening, February 29 [1924], in a debate with the boys on the subject: Resolved that women teachers should receive a salary equal to that of men teachers for equal device.

 

Much propaganda had been broadcasted during the first term but no results were apparent until the girls began coming to the boys' trial debates and holding sessions of their own. Then from a group of aspirants that rivaled one of our athletic turnouts, [team coach] Miss Drew selected four of the best and issued a challenge to Coach Sowle, which was to prove a nemesis to his well organized crew ere long.

 

In the meantime several outside debates were talked of and even scheduled for the boys as in the past, but because of various affairs that conflicted and made these impossible, they were one by one cancelled until the high school debate, that of the boys and girls, was the main feature in this field.

 

The affirmative was upheld by the girls, comprising: —

Aurelia Schober, Rebuttal Speaker

Esther Chisholm

Marjorie McCarthy

Elizabeth Kent, Alternate 

 

And the negative by the following boys: —

Morris Jacobson, Rebuttal Speaker

Charles McCarthy

Walter O'Toole

Newall Perry, Alternate 

 

Speaking in an overcrowded auditorium, the girls won a unanimous vote from the judges, and also the right to be represented by two speakers at any other debate in which the High School might participate during the rest of the year. Miss Chisholm was chosen best speaker of the evening.