The Smith College Sophian

After graduating from Smith College in 1955, Sylvia Plath read English on a Fulbright fellowship at Cambridge. She married English poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and returned to Northampton, Massachusetts, in September 1957 to teach English for a year at Smith College. In the Sophian interview, shown here, Plath comments on British education, politics, class divisions and attitudes toward women: “English men still hold to the belief that women are dangerous when they are intelligent.”

On the same page of the Sophian is an article by Gloria Steinem in which she describes some of the social customs of India, including arranged marriages, and the political realities of the region—conflicts in the Middle East, Arab nationalism, and the Kashmir issue. Living abroad caused her to examine U.S. foreign policy with a fresh eye.