Bluestockings: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism

scope beyond the strictly historical regimes and categories of illegality BLUESTOCKINGS: borders of the nineteenth century dispose disabled persons, racialized WOMEN OF to include the adoption of the Con- Others, and women as people outside REASON FROM stitution in the eighteenth century the borders of belonging. The third and the subsequent amendments that and final chapter discusses the means ENLIGHTENMENT TO followed. In this way, she considers by which individuals challenge and ROMANTICISM the various challenges to the notions resist these borders, and how those of personhood and citizenship that sanctioned under law attempt to de- Elizabeth Eger came with the abolition of slavery, fend them. What is striking here are Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave with calls for suffrage, with property the similarities between contestations Macmillan, 2010 reform, and with the Immigration and defenses. Welke points out, for Acts of the 1920s. instance, that like those challenging REVIEWED BY GISELA This book asks a series of questions oppressive legal structures, those ARGYLE that demonstrate the complexity of who defend them rely on a similar the concept of “belonging.” Welke language of inclusion in order to mask provides examples of the ways in privilege and make it less accessible to Elizabeth Eger’s group biography which personhood and citizenship, those subordinated under law. builds on and expands the focus of while interrelated, are somewhat Encompassing legal precedents Sylvia Myers’s study The Bluestocking distinct considerations: personhood and court cases, social histories, and Circle: Women, Friendship, and the being the recognition of the indi- published letters and memoirs, Wel- Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century vidual specifically under law, the ke’s research is expansive and varied. England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, practices that constitute the rights of At times, however, Welke relies on a 1990). Myers used Carol Gilligan’s individual security and well-being, as somewhat evidentiary listing of cases analysis of female experience as well as self-ownership and mobility; for her argument. This is understand- typically structured like a web, and citizenship being the recognized able given the technique of legal rather than the male hierarchical set of formal practices and obligations writing and defense, yet a sustained structure, in order to demonstrate, to the law. discussion of select legal cases or ex- with a series of case studies, that the By acknowledging how white, amples—many only alluded to in the guidance and support of female and able manhood was invested with chapters or their epigraphs—could male mentors and friends helped the full personhood, thus providing the add a more rigorous and nuanced original “bluestocking” women gain framework for claims to land, liberty means of exploring the discrepancies confidence and achieve autonomy as and law, Welke explores the ways that between legal language and practice. intellectuals. Myers counted three an individual may have the rights of One possibility for expansion on strands in the circle’s preoccupa- citizenship, but be bereft of the rights Welke’s arguments is a more intricate tions: female advocacy, wider social of personhood. This understanding elaboration on collective social or opportunities, and aspirations to the of personhood and citizenship illu- legal action and its role in contesting life of the mind. In chapters on the minates how legal practices shape the limits of “belonging.” Certainly, bluestockings’ mentors, families, and personal identity—with all its Welke’s principle focus is individual friends, their choices and changing possibilities under law—but simul- rights, yet she contends that prac- views of marriage, and their role as taneously thwart the exercise of an tices of exclusion also work to create women writers, she provided a thor- individual under that law. community. Thus, collectivity lies ough and detailed social context for The major assertion is that “the at the heart of “belonging,” and we the bluestockings’ pursuit of learning borders of belonging,” built on legal can consider this, along with the and virtue. practices of subordination and exclu- questions that Welke raises, when Eger relies on the reader’s famil- sion, are ultimately fragile; they must thinking about emergent claims to iarity with Myers’s portrait and be constantly reaffirmed and redrawn legal rights in the twenty-first century. concentrates on her own thesis in order to maintain their authority, that better recognition of the blue- and in this sense, the organization of Katharine Wrobel is a Ph.D. Can- stockings’ intellectual work across the book follows this contention. The didate in English at York University. genres complicates the common first chapter discusses the legal means Her current research explores nine- dichotomies for eighteenth-century and claims that construct the univer- teenth-century political radicalism and culture: “the public and the private; sal legal subject as able, white, and representations of anger in the British reason and feeling; masculine and male. The second chapter considers novel during the Reform Acts. feminine; local and national; the do- the consequences of conceptualizing mestic and the civic; Enlightenment this universal subject for those not and Romanticism.” Eger initiated included in its definition. Particular- an exhibition, “Brilliant Women: ly, it highlights how administrative 18th-Century Bluestockings,” in the VOLUME 29, NUMBER 3 193 National Portrait Gallery, London, culture.” For an example, she cites community.” Lastly, Eger argues that 2008; she organized it with the help Angelica Kauffmann’s historical for the bluestockings conversation of Lucy Peltz, with whom she also paintings, typically a masculine on the model of Socratic dialogue co-authored the accompanying book genre, and her self-portraits as a served women’s education and was of essays of the same title. She frames professional painter. She organizes a substitute for men’s training in her present study with two visual her case studies in three chapters, oratory. (Margaret Fuller would call representations: Richard Samuel’s focusing on six women selected from her extra-mural course of studies idealizing group portrait, The Nine the “nine living muses”: Elizabeth for women in Boston from 1839 to Living Muses of Great Britain, and Montagu, Elizabeth Carter, Elizabeth 1844, “Conversations.”) Thomas Rowlandson’s caricature, Griffith, Charlotte Lennox, Anna Besides her role as hostess—“Queen Breaking Up of the Bluestocking Barbauld, and Lucy Aiken. The first of the Blues,” in the words of Dr. Club. The first, exhibited at the chapter, entitled “The Bluestocking Johnson—Montagu distinguished Royal Academy in 1779, groups nine Salon: Patronage, Correspondence herself through an essay on Shake- major contemporary women writers and Conversation,” establishes speare. In the second chapter, “Fe- and artists in an idealized, classicist these three activities as fulfilling the male Champions: Women Critics of style below a statue of Apollo, god moral philosophers’ prescription of Shakespeare,” Eger gathers together of the arts, as proof of Great Britain’s sociability and sympathy as requisite Montagu, Charlotte Lennox, actress, glory, whereas the second, a print of for the new commercial society. All playwright, translator, and editor, 1815, satirizes the bluestockings as three activities “occupy a space be- and Elizabeth Griffith, author of “unsex’d” brawling slatterns. This tween public and private spheres of epistolary novels, who each con- historical trajectory parallels the discourse,” which may explain their tributed a distinct perspective to the changing meaning of their moni- neglect by literary historians and crit- emerging, and decidedly masculine, ker: “bluestocking” (which denotes ic. They expand Jürgen Habermas’s field of Shakespeare criticism. Mon- working men’s worsted hose and had definition of the public sphere in tagu defended Shakespeare’s genius, formerly been a derogatory name terms of print culture alone. especially in the tragedies, in reply to for Cromwell’s Little Parliament), Practicing what was called the Voltaire’s negative comparison with was first applied to the casual dress “bluestocking philosophy,” Lady French drama. Her essay was very permitted to male guests at Lady Montagu used the wealth derived well-received in England, as well as Montagu’s assemblies, after which from her husband’s coal mines and in Germany and in France, where it came to designate, positively, the ably administered by her when she was invited to the Académie women there who sought intellectual widowed to fulfill her social duty française. Griffith praised especially company. As their cultural work through the patronage of literature the moral philosophy that informed prospered and provoked male anxiety, and culture. Her patronage included Shakespeare’s female characters. the name took on negative connota- architecture, in the building of her Differing from both Montagu’s and tions, as in Byron’s satire The Blues: new, second London mansion, de- Griffith’s approach, Lennox critiqued A Literary Eclogue (1821). signed to accommodate the growing the hierarchy of genres by promot- In her first chapter, “Living Muses: bluestocking circle (c. 1756-75). ing romance as defining national The Female Icon,” Eger discusses the Bringing the informal sociability of literature. Unlike classical literature, intersecting of the allegorical and country houses

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