by Chloe Carley
“This is a place of education; it empowers women to forge a career for themselves. If you do not think that is progressive enough, then I suggest you leave immediately,” the matron said, turning on her heels and storming down the corridor as the heads of the other students disappeared quickly into their rooms lest they should also receive her wrath.
“I shall leave, but I am not doing so without the certificate I am owed for enduring my time here!” Isabelle shouted after her, slamming the door to her bedroom.
It was not the first time Isabelle and the matron had disagreed. Despite her unwavering support for female emancipation, Isabelle found women in positions of authority somewhat hard to deal with.
Firs, it had been Miss Merritt and now the matron of the teaching college. She was more comfortable in the company of men, an ironic fact given her political leanings, though understandable in light of her hometown in which men outnumbered women by a considerable majority.
The matron and school authorities were reluctant to give in to Isabelle’s demands. Unfortunately for them she had proved a most able student, satisfying all the criteria necessary for the issuing of a certificate indicating her competence to teach.
In light of her disruptive behavior it was decided that the college had no desire to be associated with the suffrage movement, nor the sort of girls that it attracted. By the following week, Isabelle had been issued with the certificate; the matron refused to speak to her, instead sliding the certificate underneath her door alongside a notice to vacate her room as soon as possible.
Isabelle had had quite enough of life at the teacher training college and was only too happy to pack her bags and prepare to leave New York for Texas. She would miss her friends in the suffragette movement and the protests, which she had greatly enjoyed. It would be nice to see her father, though, and her sister, to whom she wrote, informing her of her imminent arrival.
It would take several weeks for her to reach Little Hope, travelling some distance by train and then taking the wagon train across country. She wondered if much had changed at home in the time that she had been gone.
Would Sheriff Quentin still be chasing after bandits and locking up anyone who looked at him funny? Would Mr. Jesse Wayne still be tolling the church bell and calling the town to prayer, and would that same sense of adventure still hang over Little Hope?
Isabelle pondered all these things as she strapped up her trunk and left her room for the final time. The matron gave her a disdainful look, but the other girls rushed out to wish her well. They assisted her with her things and begged her to write to them often.
Isabelle had made quite an impression upon New York City, and it, too, had made an impression upon her. She was no longer the innocent southern belle who had left her home in search of a better life. Now she was fired up with a determination to help the residents of her hometown and prove that a woman could do the job of any man if given half the chance.
“Goodbye, y’all,” Isabelle said, forgetting her elocution lessons at the hands of Miss Merritt. “I will write often. Be sure y’all come down to visit me one day in Little Hope!” And she climbed into the cart which would take her to the station.
“Take care, Isabelle, and see to it that you behave at home,” one of the girls said, laughing at the thought of Isabelle now riding off into the deep south.
“My way is the best way, so make sure y’all cause that matron some trouble,” she shouted back, waving frantically to them all as the cart trundled off down the street.
Isabelle looked around her at the hustle and bustle of New York City. It would be good to return to the country and to her home. The town of Little Hope awaited, and she wondered what she might find there upon her return. Somehow, she knew it would not be as she had left it: She herself had changed and it seemed inevitable that Little Hope would have done so too.
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