A bluestocking is an educated, intellectual woman. Until the late 18th century, the term had referred to learned people of both sexes.[1] However it subsequently was applied primarily to intellectual women, and the French equivalent bas bleu had a similar connotation.[2] The term later developed negative implications, and in some instances such women were stereotyped as being "frumpy". The reference to blue stockings may arise from the time when woollen worsted stockings were informal dress, in contrast to formal, fashionable black silk stockings. Curiously, the most frequent such reference is to a man, Benjamin Stillingfleet, who reportedly lacked the formal black stockings, yet still participated in the Blue Stockings Society.[3][4]
John Amos Comenius referred to bluestockings in 1638,[5] deploring how women had been excluded from higher education in ancient times. The name may also 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; and in the 17th century to the Covenanters in Scotland, who wore unbleached woollen stockings, in contrast to the bleached or dyed stockings of the more affluent.
The Blue Stockings Society was a literary society led by Elizabeth Montagu and others in the 1750s in England. This society was originally founded by women, and included many prominent members of English society, both male and female, including Harriet Bowdler, Edmund Burke, Sarah Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Frances Pulteney.[6][7] M.P, an 1811 play by the Irish writer Thomas Moore, was also known as The Blue Stocking. It contained a character Lady Bab Blue who was a parody of bluestockings.
Intellectual women have increased greatly in number since, as women now enter higher education in large numbers. For example, in Britain, women are now 55% of new entrants to university and outnumber men at every level up to PhD.[8] But beliefs persist about the need to dress fashionably and an old saying is "women don't become bluestockings until men have tired of looking at their legs." Successful intellectual women such as Susan Greenfield and Noreena Hertz dress attractively for publicity photoshoots. Even former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was described by the BBC in 1957 as "very pretty, and dresses most attractively. Very feminine ... her main charm was that she does not look like a career woman."[8]"The Bluestocking" is the name of the yearbook of Mary Baldwin College, a traditionally all-women's school in Staunton, Virginia.
There were older prejudices such as that of William Hazlitt who 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." In Japan, a literary magazine SeitÅ (Bluestocking) was launched in 1911 to provide an outlet for creative Japanese women. It ran until 1916 when the anarchist editor, Noe Ito, became exhausted by conflict with the government and moved more deeply into the Japanese anarchist movement.[9]