College Widow: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:Collegewidow.jpg|thumb|350px|You know it was once a prominent trope when it was used as a brand name for ''cigars''.]]

 

A character type dating to at least the early 20th century (there was a 1904 Broadway production entitled ''The College Widow''), but now a [[Forgotten Trope]]: a single woman living in a college town who attracts, encourages and enjoys the attention of the young men from the local school. Often she is the younger wife of a deceased faculty member or college president, but in any case she is barely older than the students she courts. As a genuine widow, she came upon a healthy taste (and talent) for sexual relations ''legitimately'', but her youth left her with her wifely desires still burning hot; she thus turns to the school's handy supply of strapping young men to fill them. Her house, just off the campus, is usually the home to at least one [[Wild Teen Party]] a week if not more, and during Prohibition it's all but a speakeasy.

In an era when most colleges and universities were male-only, she was usually the only outlet for a healthy young man's sexual urges short of the nearest brothel, and often far less expensive. Naturally, other local citizens viewed her as being a singlehanded danger to the moral rectitude of hundreds if not thousands of impressionable young men. Usually seen as a [[Femme Fatale]] if not [[The Vamp]], although she normally serves no master but her own libido.

 

 

{{examples}}

 

== [[Film]] ==

* ''Horse Feathers'' was in fact mostly a spoof of a 1927 film called simply ''The College Widow'' featuring Delores Costello as the title character, Jane Witherspoon. The daughter of a professor, Jane was technically a bit young to be considered a true college widow but filled the role anyway. This itself was a remake of a 1915 silent film of the same name, in which Jane was played by Ethel Clayton.

* Possibly playing on the 1915 film was a 1916 production called ''Dad's College Widow,'' but little is known about the story.

* Vivien Leigh plays a variation on the college widow in ''A Yank at Oxford'', the variation being that she's not really a widow, just the neglected wife of a much older husband.

* The coach's wife in ''Tea and Sympathy'' wasn't exactly a widow, although her husband didn't pay much attention to her, which is why she turned her attention to the young man whom his more 'hearty' classmates thought was gay, although he wasn't.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

[[Category:Love Interests]]

[[Category:Always Female]]

[[Category:Widow Woman]]