Digital Extra

 Sarah Doyle (1830-1922)
A sphere 'with an infinite radius'

  By GINA MACRIS
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

Sarah Elizabeth Doyle combined strength, vitality and determination in a career dedicated to broadening horizons for Rhode Island women in the latter part of the 19th century.

Doyle was perhaps best known as a key figure in the movement that led Brown University to open its doors to women, in stages, during the 1890s.

She also helped establish the Rhode Island School of Design and was a prominent supporter of women's suffrage.

In her own life, Doyle discovered that the path toward social reform lay in a sphere separate from men - a burgeoning world of women's clubs that spread across the country in the late 19th century. But Doyle was fond of saying that that women's sphere, albeit separate, was "one with an infinite radius."

Sarah Doyle was born in 1830 in Providence, where she lived all her 92 years. She was the third of seven children of bookbinder Thomas Doyle and Martha Dorrance (Jones) Doyle.

Doyle graduated from the Providence High School in 1846 and taught in private schools until 1856, when she returned to her alma mater. She was principal of the girls' department of the high school from 1878 until she retired in 1892. But her most important work was yet to come.

Doyle was a prodigious clubwoman. She said women needed the association of other women to develop the educational opportunities long monopolized by men.

She was instrumental in founding the Rhode Island Woman's Club in 1876, a forerunner of a national - and ultimately international - network of women's organizations that were dedicated to social reform at the turn of the century.

In 1889, she helped draft a constitution for the nationwide General Federation of Women's Clubs. Much later, she traveled to Italy as a clubwoman, saying upon her return that she was "more than ever convinced that the stage of civilization of any country is closely associated with the position held by its women."

In Rhode Island, it was an alliance of women's clubs that first sent a delegation to Brown University in 1885 to talk to its president, Ezekiel G. Robinson, about admitting women students.

Nothing happened until the presidency passed to Elisha Benjamin Andrews, who allowed women to take college exams in 1891 and the next year offered tutoring and promised that any women who passed the exams would receive a Brown degree.

But the women's foothold at Brown was extremely tentative without adequate facilities. In 1895, Andrews turned to Doyle to raise money to build a college where the women could be taught. Two and a half years later, Doyle presided over the dedication of Pembroke Hall, which cost almost $38,000, all of it donated by Rhode Island women, many of them clubwomen.

Although Doyle's manner in public was direct to the point of seeming abrupt, the high school girls whom she taught idolized her for her devotion to them. Many became school teachers themselves and formed the Sarah E. Doyle Club in tribute to her, donating $1,000 a year toward scholarships for women at Brown. She knew how to pass the torch.

Sources: The Search for Equity, Women at Brown University, 1891-1991; Notable American Women, vol. 1; Women, Power and Leadership, excerpts from a centennial symposium, Oct. 18-20, 1991; Providence Journal, Dec. 22, 1922.

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