Bonding and Camaraderie (Group B)

Jewell Genevieve Cooper and friends, bonding through nature.

     The Florida State College for Women has a rich history of tight bonds between the girls who attended. Themes seen through the Jewell Genevieve Cooper scrapbook from the early 20th century are unity, womanhood, and camaraderie. On scrapbook page 21 a collage of pictures can be of students posing together and walking together in nature. Written in the middle of the page is "The Honeymoon Hike Oct. 10, 1925." The Honeymoon Hike photos showcase friends posing and walking with arms around each other, showcasing body language which implies the people are friendly with one another. Many girls are depicted as smiling or comedically posing with their friends and seem to be having an enjoyable time. To further analyze, the photo on the top left of the page depicts two students walking with the one on the right placing their arm around the girl on the left; the students in the photo are depicting a very close and personal way of hiking which would be seen among people who are close with one another. Page 21 is not the only scrapbook page depicting friends hiking together, which shows many students bonded and increased friendships through shared experiences in nature. 

Jewell Genevieve Cooper and friends, bonding through nature. (Cont.)

     On page 133 of Cooper's scrapbook, it gets more into depth about the hiking she did with her friends. The top of the page shows the writing "SUNDAY HIKES 1924-25," this shows us the hikes were a weekly part of Cooper's experience at Florida State College for Women for a year, as I touched upon earlier. Many of the photos on this page are accompanied by captions determining the location of the hike but under the middle left photo is a list of names. "Viola-Rena-Marg-Kat-Juanita", this list of names gives us a glimpse of some of the people Cooper bonded with over these weekly experiences of nature. It is fair to assume the group is friends as they are standing close with arms wrapped around each other. Just like the previous scrapbook page I talked about, this page features photos of many students interacting in a friendly way. The body language poses, and weekly hikes all add up to a feeling of camaraderie between the group. Cooper and her friends must have really found these hikes worthwhile as they kept up with the tradition on Sundays for an entire year. A year's worth of weekly hikes is certainly enough time spent to bond together over the shared interest and love of nature in Tallahassee.

Camaraderie through adventure 

     On the Cooper scrapbook page 149 we see more themes of bonding in nature through hiking, but this page, in particular, gives us more insight into what the hiking entails. Unlike the previous pages mentioned, page 149 shows what appears to be a retreat-style hike. The pictures showcase what looks like a camping spot with a dock, chair set up with games, and a cabin. The top left photo is captioned "A Favorite "Goat" Sport," the picture depicts students sitting in wooden chairs around two girls playing a horseshoes type game. The girls in the photo all seem to be looking in the direction of whatever the one girl is throwing, presumably to see how close it gets to the target. Friendly competition through games is a classic way of bonding and establishing camaraderie. On the top right photo, we see girls sitting and laying around what looks like a cabin. Possibly a place to rest after hiking, the cabin looks relatively small and cozy. Definitely not a shared space for those who are not comfortable with one another. The aspect of this hike that appears different from the rest is the sense of adventure. The journey to this retreat destination through hiking and the hike back to the starting point make this trip and the photos from it feel like the documentation of a comrade adventure.

Bonding through "Weddings"

     One original and tradition of the Florida State College for Women were the Junior-freshman weddings. An upperclassman would get "married" to a lower classman and serve as a guide and mentor for their years at Florida State together. The weddings were over the top, playing heavily off gender stereotypes in a playful and comedic manner. The upperclassmen would dress like grooms in tuxedos and act like husbands. Sarah Lynne Jünke goes into further detail about the bonding and camaraderie through these weddings in her article "Take Another Look At 'Em": Passing Performances of Gender in the Junior-Freshman Weddings of Florida State College for Women, 1909-1925." She states "Insular all-female college campuses allowed women to develop deep companionate relationships with other women, but these relationships were not unique to the college environment.- Victorian Era gender ideology characterized these relationships as “platonic and romantic” and said they were healthy and acceptable.97 Married women wrote loving letters to other women, had them spend the night in their beds, and pined for them, and this was all considered evidence of “one of women’s noblest characteristics”—her capacity for love." These weddings created relationships between students which would grow into lifelong friendships and camaraderie between the girls.