Virginia Woolf's Cambridge

"To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the color, eve it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willow wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he has never been" (Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Page 7).

In Cambridge on our punting boat tour, the campus was filled with unimaginable beauty, but we continued to pass after boat and boat again, paying no real attention to the ones on the other side of the river, the ones doing the same as I was. I continued to admire the beauty of the place, having almost recollection to the other people living the same life I was living in that moment. It's strange how old of a tradition the punting boat tours are, that even Virginia Woolf wrote about them in the same way I am able to.

"His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me" (Woolf, Page 8).

During our tour, we were told of how the history of the place began with men, and how even now it is more difficult for women to attend the two universities. Men can be boys but the women need to be scholarly adults with manners ad class. Times have changed, but maybe not enough.