Though she never set foot on campus, English political economist
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) had a tremendous -- if somewhat
irreverent -- influence on the students at Wellesley from 1886
to 1914. "Of heroic size, a noble representation of womanly
force and tranquility, Anne Whitney's statue of Harriet
Martineau had watched the stream of American girlhood flow
through "the Center" [of College Hall] and surge around the
palms for twenty-eight years. ... [R]epresenting as it did her
ideal modern woman, [Whitney] gave it in 1886 to Wellesley,
where modern womanhood was in the making." One of the College's
early traditions -- one that sadly ended when College Hall
burned to the ground in 1914 -- was "passing through Harriet."
Florence Converse 1893 expressed the statue's importance on
campus: "No freshman was considered fully matriculated until she
had been dragged through the rungs of Miss Martineau's great
marble chair." (Illustration caption: "One of the first steps in
our education." -- 1913 Legenda)