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Most librarians are probably aware of the librarian "stereotype." Librarians are old, female, spinsters, and terribly efficient. They wear their hair in buns, dress conservatively, and have glasses. Naturally, we all know this is not the case. There are some lovely young female librarians. In fact, there are even male librarians, and not all of them are in information technology. Still, the stereotypes flourish.
While the stereotype of the spinster librarian exists even in today's society, it is changing. We do see male librarians, young librarians, strong and sassy librarians, although still along with the old stereotype. For example, only a few weeks ago I saw a commercial for DSH shipping that had an older, female librarian with glasses, a bun, and a habit of shushing people. But what was the stereotype fifty years ago? In the 1940s and 1950s, the spinster librarian was the most popular portrayal.
One could see films as representing the popular view of librarians. Librarians in the 1940s and 1950s were frequently minor characters, playing some role in the background. Ray and Brenda Tevis, in their book The Image of Librarians in Cinema, 1917-1999 say: Motion pictures released during the 1940s, on the whole, base the recognition of reel librarians on the stereotypical image. In the majority of films released during the 1940s in which reel librarians appeared, they were in supporting roles, on screen for brief time periods (Tevis, 38).
This means that the audience had to be able to identify the actor or actress immediately as a librarian. And because the librarian had to be easily identified, she had to fit some popular stereotype. The Tevis' have a list of popular physical characteristics used to identify librarians from the 1930-1950s.
1. Age. Librarians are depicted as older individuals. The authors designate this as the "only 38" characteristic, a reference to the 1923 film Only 38 in which a 38-year old college librarian is considered old by her two college children. The "only 38" characteristic identifies reel librarians who are or appear to be older individuals.2. Hairstyle. Women librarians display a bun hairstyle, while the equivalency for male librarians is baldness or a receding hairline. 3. Eyeglasses. Librarians wear eyeglasses, frequently removing and putting them on in the library, but seldom wearing them outside the library. 4. Modest Clothes. The majority of librarians appearing middle-aged or older dress in modest, conservative clothing. This may be the filmmaker's adherence to his pre-conceived idea that "only 38" individuals are conservative, and therefore, reluctant to abandon their wardrobes for current fashions. Or, perhaps, a filmmaker's recognition of the financial constraints of working librarians makes the modest clothes of reel librarians a symbol of sumptuary principle of the occupation that not only promotes but also entrenches the elderly image. |
The librarians in Wonder Man (1945) and The Man Who Never Was (1956) do not follow the stereotype at first glance but do upon closer inspection. Ellen Shanley in Wonder Man may be young and beautiful, but she also dresses conservatively and is seen answering reference questions in the library. Lucy Sherwood in The Man Who Never Was suddenly dons glasses once she enters the library, dresses more conservatively, and vigorously stamps books. One does get the impression, however, that these are not career librarians. Please note that The Philadelphia Story, Wonder Man, It's a Wonderful Life, The Man Who Never Was, and Desk Set are analyzed in more depth later.
The David O. McKay Library at Brigham Young University compiled a list of films that portray librarians, and the descriptions of the films do suggest that the Tavis's conclusions are accurate. (I compiled a shortened version of the list for the 1940s and 1950s, putting them in chronological order, with a table analyzing the role of the librarians in the films.) The majority of the films have female librarians; the men are always in academic or professional positions, for example, working in the morgue in the newspaper office, in the New York Public Library, or as Chief Librarian. The women almost always work in public libraries.
Most of the women are spinsters, and if they are not, they are frequently main characters and the "love interest" of the hero. Again, this should not strike one as odd. If a man wanted a middle class, well-educated working woman, a librarian would be a logical choice. If they are spinsters and main characters, however, it is frequently to make a point. For example, Mary Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life is a spinster librarian only because George wasn't there to marry her.
While these portrayals of librarians are fascinating, the real questions are (a) why did actors and directors portray them like this, and (b) how did librarians of the time see themselves?
There are certain professions in our society that have a spinster stereotype attached to them, governess, school teacher, and librarian being but three examples. As undesirable as these stereotypes are, there is a historical explanation for them. These three professions were all positions open to women from middle-classed backgrounds with good educations (Robbins, 7). Not all women married, either because they didn't desire it or because no one ever asked, and if they never married, they became "old maids" or spinsters. Naturally, they needed a way to support themselves.
Women tended to be librarians in the public sphere. This can be seen in literature from the time. In Librarian: A Carefully Compiled Civil Service Course Book there is a series of true/false questions detailing a librarian's duties. One of these questions reads: The Librarian should do all in her power to encourage textbook study in the library (Church, 64). Notice the book uses the word "her," not his. We are only now starting to move away from referring to everyone in the masculine form, so this deliberate use of the female possessive is certainly significant. (The italics are mine.)
But there were male librarians, too. Edwin Wolf states: Occasionally we read of the warmth with which a writer regarded a librarian, not because of his automaton card-catalogue mind, but because of the ideas and the unthought-of-leads he suggested (Wolf). (The italics are mine.) Edwin Wolf, however, worked at the Drexel Library, a University Library in Pennsylvania. It does seem that if men worked in the library, it was in administrative positions or academia so it is not surprising that Wolf would use the masculine form. Also, a lot of the librarians writing about libraries in this period were men, and many of them worked in the academic environment.
But this still does not explain why librarians were seen as spinsters in film. Louise Robbins in The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown says:
Strong negative reactions often greeted women's postwar efforts to forge new roles for themselves as well. Although Rosie the Riveter had been welcomed on assembly lines during the war, when men began to return from the front women were encouraged -- or mandated -- to return to their traditional private sphere within the home and family.... Women's patriotic duty now was to help their returning men adjust to peacetime life, to exercise their creativity by making homes in the towns, cities, and newly burgeoning suburbs, and to make advantage of the remarkable new appliances that were appearing in the booming postwar market. Earlier steps toward greater freedom and independence for women were stymied by a narrowed sense of women's "place." (Robbins, 5). |
This means that any woman who began her career in the library would be forced by society to leave her job and stay at home with the children. Therefore, it is unlikely that many pretty, marriage-minded young women would have stayed in the library for any great length of time.
However, if a woman loved her job, she would find herself in a rather difficult position. It would take a strong woman to go against society's dictates and continue work in the library after she married. Ruth Brown, a librarian from the 1940s and 1950s, chose to remain unmarried for precisely this reason.
Like many other professional women of her time, Brown felt a calling to her chosen life's work. Although at the time she was engaged to be married, she decided that "she was doing it because everybody else was doing it" and that she was not a person who should get married. Instead the library was "like a marriage to her." |
Therefore, if a woman never married, she would continue work in the library, as has been previously stated. And one will find that most films are set in public libraries, where these women worked. If an actress wanted to portray a librarian, the type of librarian she would likely be familiar with would be the spinster who ran the library. After all, no young thing would be given that kind of power. If, for example, someone walked into the Bartlesville Public Library in the 1940s, the library Ruth Brown worked in, one would find a stereotypical librarian working the desk.
As undesirable as the spinster stereotype might be, it does make a certain amount of sense in this context.
One of the first lessons a student of history learns is that there are always multiple perspectives. Therefore, since we looked at how the public and Hollywood saw librarians, it stands to reason that it is equally important to understand how librarians saw themselves and their profession. If we understand what motivated librarians to act in certain ways, we may better understand why the public viewed librarians the way they did.
Librarianship had a certain Trans-Atlantic quality to it in the 1940s and 1950s, and many of the works written about librarianship are actually by British authors observing the American system.
One will find that the goals of librarianship fundamentally have not changed all that much in the last fifty to sixty years. Henry Sharp, a British librarian, in Libraries and Librarianship in America: A British Commentary and Comparison complains about librarianship's poor reputation. He isn't talking about stereotypes, though, he's talking about bad librarians. He says personality is one of the most important factors in good librarianship and that many librarians do and say things to give good librarians a bad name.
Personality counts more than most of us are wont to think, and by personality I do not mean the bluster and the busy-ness that are so often confused with it; I mean alertness, tactfulness, willingness to listen, ability to conceal one's amazement at readers' sheer ignorance, and a lot more." |
What we see in this paragraph is that there are rules of conduct for librarians. Librarians have to have a certain temperament. There are many librarians in films who have dreadful personalities; they aren't interested in their users, they are more interested in shelving than helping, they have sour dispositions, or look bored. All of these things one so often sees go against the fundamental principles of good librarianship. The fact that Sharp points these things out, however, does suggest that some librarians did have problems following these rules.
One should not be surprised that people unsuited to the librarian profession occasionally found themselves working at the reference desk. If a woman, for example, needed a job in 1946, her options were limited. Therefore, this unsuitable young woman with no interest in helping users might find herself working in the library. Also, since humans tend to remember the negative more often than the positive, patrons would likely remember this one bad librarian.
Wolf has a slightly different view on good librarianship. For him, a love of reading and need to share that love with others is the most important factor. An excitement for learning is the second, and efficiency and a love of all things technical the third.
Let us assume that the first requisite for a librarian is a love of reading and a natural affection for other people who love reading; that the second is a contagious feeling of joyful wonderment at the explosive excitement in books; and that the third is the technical knowledge necessary to perform a particular library job. |
Librarians are stereotypically anal-retentive about rules and efficiency. But by the above standards, efficiency comes in last. Both Sharp and Wolf put the users and their happiness first, just as we do today. Does this mean librarians weren't obsessed with efficiency? One would hope they were. Try running a library without organization and efficiency. Still the user is the foundation of every library.
Librarians in film frequently don't do real librarians justice. Real librarians, the ones who went into the profession for the right reasons, loved users, they loved books, they were friendly, helpful, and hopefully efficient. They may have been male or female, young or old, but that wasn't supposed to matter. Nowhere in the books from the period does it say that a librarian had to be male or female. In fact, Adrian Paradis even encourages men to go into the field of children's librarianship, a field that was stereotypically female: "Lest you think that work in a children's library is just for the ladies, it isn't so! Out in Seattle's King County Public Library, Bernard Poll proves that men make fine children's librarians, too!" (Paradis, 26). It is the public who made rules about how a librarian should look and act, rules that rarely had anything but a superficial basis in reality.
Still, it is important to look at both perspectives and to understand both the views of the public and the goals of real librarians.