Editing Bluestocking

{{Short description|Term for an educated, intellectual woman}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Italic title}}
{{EngvarB|date=October 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2020}}

[[File:Bluestockings3.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Bluestockings by Richard Samuel]]
[[File:Rowlandson-Bluestockings.jpg|thumb|right|Caricature of blue stockings by [[Thomas Rowlandson|Rowlandson]]]]
'''''Bluestocking''''' (also spaced '''blue-stocking''' or '''blue stockings''') is a [[Pejorative|derogatory term]] for an educated, [[intellectual]] woman, originally a member of the 18th-century [[Blue Stockings Society]] from England led by the hostess and critic [[Elizabeth Montagu]] (1718–1800), the “Queen of the Blues”, including [[Elizabeth Vesey]] (1715–1791), [[Hester Chapone]] (1727–1801) and the [[Classics|classicist]] [[Elizabeth Carter]] (1717–1806). In the following generation came [[Hester Lynch Piozzi]] (1741–1821), [[Hannah More]] (1745–1833) and [[Frances Burney]] (1752–1840).<ref>Tinker, 1915.</ref> The term now more broadly applies to women who show interest in literary or intellectual matters.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bluestocking-British-literary-society |title=Bluestocking {{!}} British literary society |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |language=en |access-date=2020-04-26}}</ref>

Until the late 18th century, the term had referred to learned people of both sexes.<ref>{{citation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=80e-gY-4VY8C&pg=PA235 |page=235 |year=2007 |title=Early Feminists and the Education Debates: England, France, Germany, 1760–1810 |isbn=978-0-8386-4087-6 |author=Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos}}</ref> It was later applied primarily to intellectual women and the French equivalent ''bas bleu'' had a similar connotation.<ref>{{citation |author=Hannah More |author-link=Hannah More |title=The Bas Bleu, or, Conversation|year=1782}}</ref> The term later developed negative implications and is now often used in a derogatory manner.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}} The reference to blue stockings may arise from the time when woollen [[worsted]] [[Stocking|stockings]] were informal dress, in contrast to formal, fashionable black silk stockings.{{Citation needed |date=March 2013}} The most frequent such reference is to a man, [[Benjamin Stillingfleet]], who reportedly lacked the formal black stockings, yet participated in the [[Blue Stockings Society]].<ref>{{citation |author=James Boswell |author-link=James Boswell |title=The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, Comprising A Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; And Various Original Pieces of His Composition; With a Chronological Account of His Studies and Numerous Works |page=823}}</ref><ref>{{citation |author=Ethel Rolt Wheeler |title=Famous Blue-Stockings |page=23}}</ref> As Frances Burney, a Bluestocking, recounts the events, she reveals that Stillingfleet was invited to a literary meeting by Elizabeth Vesey but was told off because of his informal attire. Her response was “don’t mind dress! Come in your blue stockings!”.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://daily.jstor.org/the-bluestockings/ |title=The Bluestockings |last=Wills |first=Matthew |date=2019-04-04 |website=JSTOR Daily |language=en-us |access-date=2020-04-26}}</ref>

==History==
The [[Blue Stockings Society]] was a literary society led by [[Elizabeth Montagu]] and others in the 1750s in England. Elizabeth Montagu was a social anomaly in the period because she took possession of her husband’s property when he died, allowing her to have more power in her world.<ref>Beckett, J. V. "Elizabeth Montagu: Bluestocking Turned Landlady." Huntington Library Quarterly 49, no. 2 (1986): 149–64.</ref> This society was founded by women, and included many prominent members of English society, both male and female, including [[Harriet Bowdler]], [[Edmund Burke]], [[Sarah Fielding]], [[Samuel Johnson]], and [[Frances Pulteney]].<ref>{{citation|author=Louis Kronenberger|title=Kings and Desperate Men|page=75}}</ref> ''[[M.P. (opera)|M.P.]]'', an 1811 [[comic opera]] by [[Thomas Moore]] and [[Charles Edward Horn]], was subtitled ''The Blue Stocking''. It contained a character, Lady Bab Blue, who was a parody of bluestockings.

A reference to bluestockings has been attributed to [[John Amos Comenius]] in his 1638 book, where he mentioned ancient traditions of women being excluded from higher education, citing the [[Bible]] and [[Euripides]].{{clarify|date=January 2019}} That second reference, though, comes from Keatinge's 1896 translation and is not present in Comenius's Latin text.{{efn|Comenius cites Euripides' tragedy ''Hippolytus'', where Hippolytus says, "I detest a bluestocking. May there never be a woman in my house who knows more than is fitting for a woman to know.", to which Comenius answers: "These opinions, I opine, stand in no true opposition to our demand. For we are not advising that women be educated in such a way that their tendency to curiosity shall be developed, but so that their sincerity and contentedness may be increased, and this chiefly in those things which it becomes a woman to know and to do; that is to say, all that enables her to look after her household and to promote the welfare of her husband and her family." {{citation |title=Didactica Magna (The Great Didactic, translation by M.&nbsp;W. Keatinge, London: Adam and Charles Black, 1896) |year=1633–1638 |author=John Amos Comenius |page=220}}}} The name may have been applied in the 15th century to the blue stockings worn by the members of the ''[[Compagnie della Calza]]'' in [[Venice]], which then was adopted in Paris and London; in the 17th century to the [[Covenanter]]s in [[Scotland]], who wore unbleached woollen stockings, in contrast to the bleached or dyed stockings of the more affluent. In 1870 Henry D. Wheatley noted that [[Elizabeth Montagu]]’s coterie were named “blue stockings” after the blue worsted stockings worn by the naturalist [[Benjamin Stillingfleet]].{{efn|'Benjamin Stillingfleet, the celebrated naturalist, who is described by [Thomas] Gray as living in a garret in order that he might be able to support some near relations, died at his lodgings opposite to Burlington House on 15 December 1771 at the age of sixty-nine. It was his blue worsted stockings that gave the name "blue stocking" to the ladies of Mrs Montagu's coterie.' Henry D. Wheatley, ''Round About Piccadilly And Pall Mall'', London: Smith Elder (1870), p. 42.}}

[[William Hazlitt]] said, “The bluestocking is the most odious character in society...she sinks wherever she is placed, like the yolk of an egg, to the bottom, and carries the filth with her”.<ref>{{cite book|author=Elizabeth Eger|title=Bluestockings: women of reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LFomAQAAMAAJ|year=2010|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=9780230205338|page=206}}</ref>

==Recent use==

In Japan, a literary magazine [[Bluestocking (journal)|''Seitō'' (Bluestocking)]] was launched in 1911 under the leadership of [[Raicho Hiratsuka|Raichō Hiratsuka]]. It ran until 1916, providing a creative outlet and political platform for [[Feminism in Japan|Japanese feminists]] even as it faced public outcry and state [[censorship]].<ref>{{citation |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nGSQjPqD-X4C&pg=PA276 |date=10 November 1998 |title=Meiji Japan |isbn=978-0-415-15618-9 |chapter=The Bluestockings |author=S. L. Sievers}}</ref>

The [[Toledo Blue Stockings]] was a [[Major League Baseball|major league baseball]] team in [[Toledo, Ohio]], from 1883 to 1885. Historically, the team is best known for being the only major league team with [[African Americans|black]] players ([[Moses Fleetwood Walker]] and his brother, [[Weldy Walker|Weldy]]) until [[Jackie Robinson]]'s appearance with the [[Brooklyn Dodgers]] in [[1947 in baseball|1947]].

[[Bluestockings (bookstore)|Bluestockings]] is the name of a volunteer-run and [[Common ownership|collectively owned]] radical bookstore, [[Fair trade|fair-trade]] café, and activist center located on the [[Lower East Side]] of [[Manhattan|Manhattan, New York City]], which opened in 1999.

''The Bluestocking'' is the [[yearbook]] of [[Mary Baldwin College]], a traditionally [[Women's colleges in the United States|all-women’s school]] in [[Staunton, Virginia]].

''Blue Stocking'' was an “unabashedly feminist" (its [[tagline]]) newspaper published in [[Portland, Oregon]], from 1993 to 1996.

The radical feminist group [[Redstockings]], founded in 1969, takes its name from ''bluestockings'' as a term to disparage intellectual women, and ''red'' for its association with the revolutionary left.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
* Burns, William E. "Bluestockings 18th and 19th centuries" in ''Reader's Guide to British History''  (2003). [http://www.credoreference.com/entry/routbrithistory/bluestockings_18th_and_19th_centuries online]
* Heller, Deborah. "The Bluestockings and Virtue Friendship: Elizabeth Montagu, Anne Pitt, and Elizabeth Carter." ''Huntington Library Quarterly'', vol. 81 no. 4, 2018, p.&nbsp;469-496.
* [[Demers, Patricia]]. ''The World of Hannah More'' (University of Kentucky Press, 1996)
* Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. ''The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England'' (Oxford University Press, 1990)
* Robinson, Jane. ''Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education'' (Penguin, 2010)
* {{cite book|author=Tinker, Chauncey Brewster |title=The salon and English letters: chapters on the interrelations of literature and society in the age of Johnson|url=https://archive.org/details/salonandenglish03tinkgoog|year=1915|publisher=Macmillan }} full text online
* {{cite EB1911|wstitle=Bluestocking |volume=4 |page=91|short=x}}
{{Feminism}}

[[Category:Feminist terminology]]
[[Category:18th century in women's history]]