Bluestockings: The First Women’s Movement, by Susannah Gibson, John Murray, 320 pp, £25, ISBN: 978-1529369991
In mid-eighteenth-century England, a group of literary women emerged who presented the society of their time with the possibility of the existence of something new – ‘a socially acceptable intelligent woman’. Susannah Gibson’s engaging new work, Bluestockings, The First Women’s Movement, celebrates the achievements of these women both as individuals and as part of a collective moment. It showcases the Bluestockings’ writings and celebrates their contributions to cultural life while also exploring the particulars of these women’s lived experiences in Georgian Britain.
The word ‘Bluestocking’ was first introduced in 1756 to describe those present at a London literary gathering after one of the guests absent-mindedly wore blue woollen stockings rather than the formal white silk to the hostess Elizabeth Montagu’s Hill Street salon. By the late 1770s it had come to be associated solely with those women in attendance, and eventually to refer to intellectual women in general. While the proto-feminism of the Bluestockings is signalled in the work’s title, Gibson is clear to acknowledge its limits and to place these women’s ideas firmly within their lifetime, explaining from the beginning, ‘she could not overturn the patriarchy – indeed such a thought never crossed her mind’. Building on previous work by scholars such as Elizabeth Eger, Emma Major and Gary Kelly, Gibson succeeds in letting her readers know why these women matter. She makes clear how their arguments for women’s ability to be rational creatures, specifically the possibility of being as rational as men, led ultimately to contemporary British women’s right to education, to earn money, to vote, and to make decisions for themselves regarding their own lives and bodies.
Gibson’s skill as a group biographer is to the fore throughout. She is able to create a vibrant overview of the teenage years of the ‘Queen of the Bluestockings’, Elizabeth Montagu née Robinson, offering us a second chapter infused with excitement. The reader enjoys a character sketch of an intelligent young woman, one who is canny and playing the game, and certainly not a ‘dreamy romantic’. It soon becomes apparent how this young girl could later go on to unite a variety of intellectual peers and play a role in changing conditions for women within British society. Beyond Montagu, we get to know a whole cast of characters, imbued with a sense of authenticity, as we learn of these women and girls’ multiple trials and tribulations. The success of Bluestockings is to be found in Gibson’s introducing us to so many different and fascinating women, and navigating their lives without ever overwhelming her readers.
The women here are undoubtedly front and centre. At one point, that giant of eighteenth century literature and the creator of A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Samuel Johnson, is recast as Elizabeth Montagu’s muse, highlighting the centrality of women to this study, with male greats playing a more supporting role. As well as relating the origin stories of influential literary works, Gibson is adept at conveying the difficulties arising within the privacy of the individual’s home. We get a real sense of the impact of ‘disastrous marriages’ on our heroines, such as Gibson’s reflections on the first marriage of seventeen-year-old Mary Granville, later Delany, to the elderly Alexander Pendarves, for example. Gibson also offers her readers two engaging case studies exploring the relationships between author Hester Mulso and solicitor John Chapone, and playwright, author, and translator Elizabeth Griffith and Kilkenny farmer and author Richard Griffith.
At its heart though, Bluestockings is an exploration of female friendship and community. There are two chapters focused primarily on this theme, namely Chapter 5, ‘The Commune’, exploring the community at Batheaston that represented a sanctuary for society’s ‘unwanted women’ including ‘illegitimate’ children and those with a disability or health condition, and Chapter 8, titled simply ‘Friendship’. Gibson communicates the Blues’ celebration of female friendships, which offered the women ‘inspiration, comfort, support and joy’. These women were crucial to each other in all aspects of their lives, and their mutual friendships were vital to their happiness. On a literary level, Gibson makes plain the importance of their encouragement of each other’s writing to each individual Bluestocking, and then, cumulatively, to the various titles produced by the group. In addition to analysis of female friendships, a considered response to same-sex relationships is also proffered, with the recognition that lacunae of proof do not equate to absence of possibility. Speaking of the very intense exchanges between Catherine Talbot and Elizabeth Carter, for instance, Gibson weighs in, exclaiming that, ‘there is no evidence that they ever had a sexual relationship; neither is there any evidence against it’. Elsewhere, the relationship between Sarah Scott and Lady Barbara Montagu, her ‘life’s partner’, is explored at length.
Whether surveying their writing lives, their friendships or their relationships and marriages, Gibson presents us with engaging, involved insights into these women’s lives throughout. Their biographical information is integrated into the different chapters in a delicate and considerate way, often uniting the individual experience with the wider social conditions. This is particularly apparent in the treatment of the Blues and motherhood. We read, for instance, of the multiple pregnancies experienced by Hester Lynch Thrale, later Piozzi, before learning of Hester’s mother’s difficult childbirth story and of Hester’s childhood. The information is revealed seamlessly, so that we receive insight into the women as individuals, but also gain an appreciation of cross-generational trauma, female solidarity and wider social contexts, through the difficulties of pregnancy, for instance, and the incredibly painful realities of childbirth and loss.
Though we have a wonderful cast of characters, Gibson’s key focus is certainly on Thrale Piozzi and Montagu as her protagonists, with the two women’s lives to the fore throughout. In ‘Motherhood’, she discusses Thrale Piozzi’s miscarriages and the deaths of her children with exceptional sensitivity and compassion in what is a standout chapter. She pays attention to each child and fleshes out the sense of loss and grief accompanying their deaths, which is often so difficult to discern from infant mortality figures. After sketching a happy family scene, Gibson tell us: ‘Despite seventeen pregnancies, this [five] was the largest number of healthy children Thrale would ever have alive at any one time.’ Heartbreaking scenes make up much of the remainder of the chapter, which focuses primarily on the Thrale family. We are presented with Hester’s dreams of death as the salon hostess and mother gazes upon ‘the thin remains of my ruined family’ and wonders about the purpose of educating her youngest child, Sophia, then five: ‘The instructions I labor’d to give them [Harry and Lucy] – what did they end in? The Grave.’ Gibson’s second sustained engagement with motherhood is through her focus on Elizabeth Montagu and her sole pregnancy, accompanied by Montagu’s and her mother’s anxieties related to this condition. John ‘Punch’ Montagu was the couple’s only child and his death, linked to teething when only fifteen months old, leads to his mother’s ‘sickness of the soul’ and decision to have no more offspring. This is all related with remarkable empathy by Gibson, and it is touching to find Punch reintroduced in the final chapter, where we learn that Montagu’s will instructs that her only child be reburied alongside her on her demise.
Gibson also makes clear that many of the Bluestockings did not have children, and this circumstance is explored at length. The poet, classicist and linguist Elizabeth Carter’s decision to avoid marriage and her choice to not become a mother, her ‘right not to bear children’ as Gibson describes it, invokes contemporary discourse such as Caroline Magennis’s Harpy: A Manifesto for Childfree Women (2024) in an eighteenth century context. The advantages to women of not being constantly pregnant and facing repeated instances of ‘lying in’ are all made abundantly clear, alongside reminders of the high maternal mortality rates during the eighteenth century. We also get an idea of the alternative pathways for those women fortunate enough to have sufficient financial autonomy and family support for their independent ventures, as we learn of their ability to lead exceptionally rewarding creative lives.
Through Gibson’s examinations of intellectual creativity, her tales of love, friendship, marriage and motherhood, these women come alive for the reader. The writing is engaging, accessible, and at times as vivacious as the characters presented to us. Gibson succeeds in capturing the essence of the Bluestockings’ lives and transcends time in relaying the minutiae of their lived experiences. She often does this through drawing on extant life writing, using surviving letters, diaries, and anecdotes. She makes particularly fine use of Thraliana, Thrale Piozzi’s six-volume, calf-bound, gold-embossed diary, and extracts from other letters and diaries are artfully sprinkled throughout. The reader also finds considerations of the silences within the archives, including, for instance, the destruction of sources detailing the ten-month marriage of Elizabeth Montagu’s sister, Sarah Robinson, to George Scott, which ended in the couple’s separation. Gibson highlights the unknowability and mystery of what happened, due to this absence of sources, though acknowledging that the material that does exist highlights women’s extreme vulnerability and dependence upon men in what was an intensely patriarchal society.
Gibson also avails of the fact that most of the Blues were accomplished writers to draw on both their works and the literary works circulating at the time. The author presumes no prior knowledge of the era’s canon, and the plot of Samuel Richardson’s bestselling Clarissa (1748), for instance, is sketched for us while the novel is also employed to enable the reader to gain a feeling of eighteenth century society. Elsewhere, Gibson carefully integrates a useful summary of Sarah Scott’s novel Millenium Hall (1762) – a work describing an exclusively female community – into her exploration of the lived experiences of Scott, Lady Barbara and other women, presenting the work as ‘an idealised version of the daily life of her [Scott’s] own household’. We learn of the circumstances behind the composition of works such as Montagu’s Dialogues of the Dead and Thrale’s in a helpful way that seeks to convey the period’s social conditions to the reader. Through explorations of their writings, we also gain an understanding of the circuitous routes women had to navigate in producing their writing and circulating their works during the eighteenth century. Hester Mulso’s letters to Samuel Richardson and her strategic embracing of a deferential character and voice therein are persuasively explored, alongside her arguments for women’s right to refuse a marriage proposal, and her own eventual six-year engagement to her fiancé while awaiting her father’s approval for their marriage.
As we hear about these women’s writing lives, we also gain a clear sense of the structure of their day in terms of leisure pursuits and opportunities, with Gibson careful to acknowledge the ‘luxuries of time, space, and peace’ these women experienced. She is cognisant of the expense incurred by these well-off women throughout, repeatedly noting the cost of a London season, for instance. She recognises privilege throughout her character analyses, rather than turning a blind eye to the women’s high social standing. Indeed, what she terms the ‘complexities of the British class system’ are considered at length in ‘The Milking Parlour’ chapter, which recounts the relationship between the two poets Hannah More and Ann Yearsley. Here class and patronage are unpacked in sensitive fashion as we read about the period’s ‘obsession with natural genius’. Gibson is perceptive in her engagement with the erasure of ‘Yearsley the individual’, outlining how the poet was instead crafted and presented to the Bluestockings and wider society by her patron More as ‘a faceless member of a homogenous working class’. The relationship between these two women is well-handled and situated in the context and discourse of the time.
Indeed Gibson succeeds in relating and integrating contextual information in a seamless and engaging way throughout her work, so that the reader gains a sound insight into eighteenth century life. For example, we receive helpful information on smallpox, the Jacobite rebellion, the system of companionship, the political beliefs of John Wilkes, and the Fordyce Scandal (153), among many others. The reader is imperceptibly informed about the cultural moments and practicalities of Georgian life as Gibson guides us through the work. Added to this, a rich sense of place is created, including, for instance, Gibson’s descriptions of the Thrales’ home in Streatham, the assembly rooms at Bath, and visits to Paris.
At the heart of Bluestocking life was the Bluestocking salon. These were generally held within spectacular London town houses. Gibson explains the importance of the Bluestocking salon as, ‘[f]or the first time, here was a forum where women’s voices had equal billing with men’s’. The salon was a voluntary gathering of elite men and women who came together within the home of the salon hostess. Women had a key role to play within these salons as it was they who generally presided over the polite, intellectual conversation, which represented the focus of the gatherings. The idea for these literary gatherings originated in seventeenth century France, and was then warmly embraced by hostesses abroad, including by Montagu and Thrale Piozzi. The Bluestocking salons were not simply a carbon copy of the French gatherings, however, as Gibson herself makes clear, ‘[Montagu] was not interested in simply imitating Paris; her salons featured several innovations of her own devising.’
In addition to this emulation of French salons by women in England, there were also numerous important salons hosted by women in eighteenth century Ireland, though these are beyond the remit of Gibson’s study. The literary gatherings presided over by the Bluestocking Elizabeth Vesey in Lucan House in Lucan, Co Dublin, represent one notable example. Vesey gets a brief mention from Gibson as one of ‘two of the other great Bluestocking hostesses’. Like her friend Elizabeth Montagu, Vesey also put her own stamp on these intellectual parties, and organised her guests into a zig-zag seating arrangement rather than following the semi-circle style embraced by her Bluestocking friends. At Lucan House, she provided an audience for the compositions of Ireland’s aspiring and established writers. Vesey then brought the works of these playwrights and poets, such as Robert Jephson and Dean Marlay, to the attention of her influential peers in England too. She was not alone in such activities, and perhaps the most important and famous salon in eighteenth century Ireland was that presided over by Elizabeth Rawdon, Lady Moira, at Moira House on Dublin’s Usher’s Island. In this magnificent building, the hostess drew together local and international celebrities. She promoted aspiring authors who later gained great fame, including the novelists Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson (later Lady Morgan). Poetry was also celebrated and discussed at Moira House, and Thomas Dermody and Thomas Moore were both associated with the salon. The salon hostess was particularly concerned with promoting the Irish language and the customs and cultures of ancient Ireland, and antiquarians and translators were invited to contribute to the gatherings’ discussions.
Like the Bluestocking gatherings in England, these Irish salons played an important role in eighteenth century literary and cultural life. The Irish salons offered their participants a forum for the development of new research and a space for people to offer feedback on new literary works. Salons enabled all participants – both male and female – to come together to engage in conversation and debate on a whole range of topics. The Irish literary salons had a significant role to play within both Britain and Ireland with respect to literature, antiquarianism, performance, translation, and art. They also played a key role in creating and sustaining cosmopolitan networks and influencing intellectual debate.
Gibson makes clear the value of engaging with women’s life writing in exploring her subjects and their literary and intellectual pursuits, both within and beyond the salons. Extant women’s diaries from the same period in Ireland also make clear that new perspectives on women’s lived experiences, creativit, and ambitions can be gained from reading these underexplored sources. In addition to considering life writing as literary works in and of themselves, letters, diaries, and accounts can be crucial for historians and for the public at large as a means of understanding the female experience of the quotidian, whether in Britain or Ireland. Diaries and letters enable us to gain insights into these eighteenth century women’s mental health, their anxieties, preoccupations, and joys, as well as allowing us to appreciate their contributions to literature and to cultural life.
Gibson’s work is a thrilling portal into the lives of several extraordinary women in eighteenth century England and a celebration of their many achievements within the contexts of the times. She is to be commended for producing such an impressive group portrait and for succeeding in conveying both the triumphs and struggles of this exceptional group of women.
1/10/2024
Amy Prendergast is Assistant Professor in Eighteenth-Century Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of Literary Salons Across Britian and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century (Palgrave, 2015) and Mere Bagatelles: Women’s Diaries from Ireland, 1760–1810 (Liverpool University Press, 2024).
