THE BLUESTOCKINGS:
A History of the First Women’s Movement
Susannah Gibson
Susannah Gibson’s The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement gives an amazingly detailed portrait of pioneering women who, long before figures like Mary Wollstonecraft and Susan B. Anthony, resisted the inflexible norms of eighteenth-century England. The Bluestockings were a loose association of British writers, thinkers, and reformers who resisted the expectations of society in their own self-education, writing on a wide variety of subjects, and discussing matters of ideas and intellect on equal footing with men.
The text by Gibson leaps to life with leading players including Elizabeth Montagu, whose salons were crucibles for high intellectual innovation, and her sister Sarah Scott, dreamer of a utopian community of women. Similarly embedded within the discourse are the novelist Fanny Burney, whose keen pen helped bring focus upon women’s inner lives, and the historian Catharine Macaulay, relentless critic of patriarchy far before its time.
In quiet rebellion, some spoke out loudly to defy these traditional female roles and women’s education and public participation. Gibson’s work throws light not only on their contributions but also underlines their continuing relevance to the struggle for women’s rights. The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement is a readable work that every person interested in roots should know about concerning feminist thought.
