Bluestockings

Portraits in the characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo, by Richard Samuel

National Portrait Gallery

This picture shows important members of The Bluestocking Society. Click on the National Portrait Gallery link to find out more.

'There are other universities if you're so set on being a bluestocking,' Sylvie said. Sylvie, although she never quite came out and said it, thought academia was pointless for girls. 'After all, a woman's highest calling is to be a mother and a wife.' "

If you search the term bluestocking then references to a group of eighteenth century women come up.

The Blue Stockings Society started in the 1750s, was founded by a group of likeminded women, who enjoyed a privileged position in society. At a time when women were excluded from higher education and academia, they met to discuss literature and the arts. Prominent male writers and members of society also joined the group. 

Here is a list of some of the prominent, first generation members, starting with the founders:

Elizabeth Montagu - 'Queen of the Blues'

Elizabeth Vesey

Frances Boscawen

Hester Chapone

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Elizabeth Carter

Sarah Fielding

Hannah Moore

Sarah Scott

Catherine Talbot

Catherine Graham

Hester Thrale


Here is a link to portraits of the main members

And here are some of the men:

Benjamin Stillingfield - credited with inspiring the the origin of the name for the society 

Edmund Burke

David Garrick

Samuel Johnson

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Horace Walpole



It didn't take long for the term to take on negative connotations of being humourless, dry, unfeminine and frumpy. I think Izzie has that image very much in mind:

'And who wants to be a boring old bluestocking?' Izzie said.

'Me,' Pamela said.' "

What does this contemporary etching tell us about opinions of the society, or of women in general at the time?

Breaking up of the Blue Stocking Club 1815

Thomas Rowlandson 1756-1827

Copyright The Trustees of The British Museum

It is interesting  that it is Sylvie, over 150 years later, who echoes the common view of women and education; that women were not intellectually able, that such endeavours would distract them from their true calling in life (mother and wife), that it was unladylike... of course at the time that Pamela is considering university the view that a woman's place is in the home was still very much the generally accepted one. 

Nowadays much is being done to readdress this implication of the term. Please look at these excellent sites and be inspired. 

Bluestocking Films Series

Basbleu

Excellent Katelyn Ludwig site

A new take on  The Blue Stocking Society

The Bluestocking Institute

Guardian article on Bluestocking Exhibition

Another interesting review of past exhibition

Review of Jessica Swale's play, Blue Stockings

Review of Jane Robinson's book, Bluestockings

Biographical Sketches of Bluestockings,by Anna Miegon


An interesting mix of Quilts and Women's Rights


Of course, you can always buy yourself a pair...

French Blue Stockings with Birds 1885 - 1889

The Metropolitan Museum

Not like Benjamin Stillingfield's...

Poetry Quotes

I've chosen some of the poetry references from the  third section of the book: Like a Fox in a Hole; December 1923 to A Long Hard War; September 1940

'Courtship  to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play,'  Izzy said .... 'Someone said that.'"

'Congreve,' Sylvie said.'

This starts of another sparring session between the sisters-in-law at Hugh's sixtieth birthday.

William Congreve is the author of many well-known quips.

'Salute the last, and everlasting day' John Donne, considered the founder of the Metaphysical poet.This is from a Sonnet Cycle for Lady Magdalen, a stanza entitled Ascention. This quote appears when Ursula experiences the Argyll street bombing for the first time.

'Despair behind, and death before'   Another John Donne quote. Also in the Argyll street blitz, in a subsequent version. It also appears later on in different circumstances.

John Donne c.1595

Copyright National Portrait Gallery

Here are some other Donne quotes that Ursula uses, with links to the full poems, and to appraisals of them:

'Why dost thou thus, / Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?' she thought. if she could go back in time and take a lover from history it would be Donne.'"

She was thinking of Donne's poem, 'The Relic', one of her favourites - 'the bracelet of bright hair about the bone'."

John Keats 1819 by Joseph Severn

'The Queen moon... and all her starry fays'  John Keats  Ode To A Nightingale Yet again Argyll Street

Home from Sylvie's funeral in freezing London Ursula busies herself looking through a box of her old books and reads the beginning of Keat's The Eve of St Agnes:

Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass.

And silent was the flock in woolly fold.'

Ursula then tries to warm herself by quoting from another Keats' poem.

'For summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells'

This refers to the bees in the poem To Autumn

Not much later on the same grim, grey day, postwar, post Teddy, Hugh and now Sylvie, Ursula ponders:

'Would it be so very bad? 'To cease upon the midnight with no pain.' There were worse ways. Auschwitz, Treblinka. Teddy's Halifax going down in flames.' This is Ode to A Nightingale again. Another quote from this poem comes later.

'Tender is the night'

F.Scott Fitzgerald took this line for the title of his 1934 novel. Here you can listen to him read the poem.

Andrew Marvell c.1681

'What a wondrous life is this I lead!

ripe apples drop about my head;

the luscious clusters of the vine

upon my mouth do crush their wine...'

Sylvie decides that this poem by Marvell, another Metaphysical poet, is 'rather lush'

Marvell reappears:

'She tried to recall another line from Marvell, was it in 'A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body', something about bolts of bones and fetters and manacles but it wouldn't come.'

But in the end Ursula chooses Donne over Keats. 'The knowledge of his untimely death would colour everything quite wretchedly.'

Keats' grave in the protestant cemetery, Rome

How aware is she  of her own, numerous untimely deaths? 

Some New Characters

As we progress through more chapters, new characters appear. Below is a dramatis personae update.

Fox Corner, neighbours & visitors

Lane near Beaconsfield

'I've got some oak leaves and some tiny baby acorns.'

Photocopyright: David Hawgood

www.geograph.org.uk/photo/123769

Jimmy - The youngest Todd sibling

The Shawcross family - next-door neighbours including Gertie, Winnie, Millie, Nancy and Bea

The Coles - neighbours including Ben and Daniel

Clarence Dodd - Bridget's boyfriend, replacing Sam Wellington

The Daunts - from nearby Ettringham Hall

Gilbert Armstrong - friend of Maurice

Howie, later Howard S. Landsdowne III - least best said

Harold - Pamela's husband

Nigel, Andrew and Christopher - Pamela's children

Edwina- Maurice's wife

Philip and Hazel - Maurice's children

Fred Smith - A railwayman - at the moment!

Mr Carver - Runs the secretarial college Ursula attends

Beaconsfield Railway Station

London

Dr Kellet - Harley Street psychiatrist

Hilda - Ursula's supposed flatmate

Derek Oliphant - Ursula's husband

Crighton - Ursula's lover from the Admiralty

Ralph - friend or lover depending

Neighbours in Argyll Road

Mrs Appleyard and Emil 

Lavinia and Ruth Nesbit

Mr Bentley

Miss Hartnell

The Millers including various boys and Renee

Munich

The Brenners including Klara, Hilde, Hanne and Helmut

Jurgen Fuchs - Half-cousin to the Brenners and later Ursula's husband

Frieda - Ursula and Jurgen's daughter

Inside The Berghof

Eva Braun - Ursula meets her through the Brenners

Albert Speer - Hitler's chief architect

Be Ye Men Of Valour

An innocent question by a Saturday Reader about the title of the very first chapter has helped to add another layer of detail, understanding and time-hopping.

Be Ye Men of Valour was  Churchill's first speech to the nation as Prime Minister on 19th May 1940. In turn, this quotation comes from the First Book of Maccabees. It is the title to that cake-laden afternoon in a Munich cafe, November 1930. Armed with both fore-knowledge and Hugh's revolver from the First World War, Ursula is the ultimate Woman of Valour. How many times has Ursula heard Churchill's speech before she gets to this point? Ironic too, that Hitler is dispatched with a  revolver from the Great War.

As we read on, it becomes apparent to us that Ursula has seen enough and understands sufficiently to take matters into her own hands and become mistress of her own fate. Of course, on that November afternoon in  1930 the last thing on Ursula's mind is her own fate. We discussed what her motivation in carrying out this suicidal assassination is. Apart from any altruistic desire to remove Hitler from history, by now Ursula's prime motivation, we concluded, is personal, familial to the utmost. Another Saturday Reader pointed out that Hitler is not Ursula's only victim in her journey to protect her family. Bridget suffers a variety of injuries as Ursula tries to prevent her bringing home the influenza that devastated Europe at the end of the First World War.

So, only as we continue reading do we come to appreciate the dogged resolution of Ursula and the significance of Ye Men of Valour. How it contrasts with the dainty lace hanky, Ursula's maintains her good manners to the last - I only hope Sylvie would approve. Now we understand why she endured Maurice's company to learn to shoot.

Crumbs, guns and lace: what if?

Saturday Readers Meet on International Women's Day

8th March. 10 o'clock. Brilliant blue skies. The best day of the year so far. A fine day to meet, talk and celebrate International Women's Day. It was certainly apt that one of our main topics was motherhood in Life After Life. Without doubt it is a topic we keep coming back to.

We talked about motherhood in a number of ways; Sylvie's assertion that it was the only thing for a woman to do, the different versions of Sylvie as a mother, having a favourite child, Sylvie versus Izzie as mothers, the presence or lack of maternal instinct.

'Do you think I should apply to university when I finish school?'

'Oh really, dear, what's the point? It won't teach you how to be a wife and a mother.'

What if I don't want to be a wife and a mother?'

Sylvie laughed. 'Now you're just talking nonsense to provoke.'" 

For Sylvie there really is no other calling for a woman. Of course she, unlike Mrs Glover, or Bridget, doesn't have to work for a living. She has Hugh to thank for saving her from the perils of becoming an artist's model. So why should her daughters want to do any differently? Possibly, simply to annoy her, just as Izzie does. 

Why does Izzie irritate her so? This was another point of discussion. Obviously in February 1910 Izzie is the reason for Hugh's absence when Ursula is born. She has already begun her life of impulse and action, so very different in many ways to Sylvie's own. On a maternal note I think Izzie's ability to forget her son so completely, without an ounce of regret it would seem, rankles Sylvie to the extreme.

She had never forgiven Izzie for the baby. He would be thirteen now, the same age as Ursula. 'A little Fritz or Hans,' she said. 'My own children's blood running through his veins. But, of course the only thing of any interest to Izzie is Izzie.'" 

There is an interesting re-quote of this later in the book

On every visit to Fox Corner, Izzie seems to manage to annoy Sylvie with her ideas or schemes.

The cars, the hair and clothes, the writing, the success, the extravagant gifts, her changing choice of favourite all succeed in exasperating Sylvie, who cannot resist any occasion to make known her highly held opinion of her sister-in-law. Each visit provokes hissing and plate-banging, sharp comments thrown in whenever possible:

'Izzie is not a person from whom anyone with any sense would take advice.' ('Excuse me?' Izzie said.)" 

...

' And I have the house in Holland Park, and I have money, but of course no husband. Nor do I have a child.'

'Really?' Sylvie said. 'Are you sure?'

Izzie ignored her.'"

Houses in Holland Park

This generally seems to be Izzie's mechanism for coping with whatever unpleasantries come her way, be they unwanted reminders or comments, world events or financial responsibilities. Of course, that's not to say she's unaware, over lunch at Simpson's she summarises succinctly her relationship with Sylvie:

'There's always been a certain, shall we say, froideur between your mother and myself. I, of course, am considered mad, bad and dangerous to know.'"

Simpson's - famous for roast beef and chess

Deep within her heart Sylvie is jealous of Izzie, not that she can ever admit this to herself. I think Izzie represents the luxurious, fantastic life she might have lived, had her father not died and the house of cards fallen. She allowed herself to be 'rescued' by Hugh and embraced motherhood as her raison d'être.

'Motherhood was her responsibility, her destiny. It was, lacking anything else ( and what else could there be?) her life.'"

Izzie, despite the minor interruption of having a baby, is able then to go to finishing school, something else denied to Sylvie by her father's death, and then "curtailed by the relief of marriage." There are fleeting  suggestions of Sylvie as a pragmatic eighteen year old who marries Hugh and then perhaps grows to love him. One ponders over her favourite child, Teddy and the fact that he looks nothing like Hugh. We talked about mothers having a favourite, and how siblings react to this. Points of interest are that the "giddy aunt" is constantly changing her mind as to who, out of the three younger Todds, is her favourite whereas Sylvie's is always Teddy. She is an only child herself and so has never had to cope with the reality of what this might mean. The theme of favouritism among siblings is present in many of Atkinson's works.

Having taken up motherhood, Sylvie's freedom is compromised - by her own choice of course. Teddy is born in 1914 and later she is 'envious of Izzie's war, even the awfulness.'

Then there is the ultimate betrayal. Ursula's abortion and her aunt's role in the episode. Here we see a different Sylvie, standing in harsh judgement on her own daughter. This is something we will surely discuss at our next meeting.

Curiously, the only thing Sylvie and Izzie agree over is Izzie and Hugh's mother, the formidable, victorian Adelaide. More comparisons next time.

Adelaide?

'heroically victorian'

'a giant spider'

Our next reading challenge is to reach A long Hard War - September 1940 for 22nd March.

Saturday Readers Meet Again

Although it doesn't seem possible now, there were blue skies to accompany our second meeting. We cosied round a table in the British Council library and set forth to discuss our first impressions of Life After Life.

After commenting on the difficulties of trying to gage how many pages one has read on a kindle, I realised I'd set very little of the book as "homework". Now, thanks to the lovely Marcelle, I also have a paper version. There are times when only the real thing will do.

There was general agreement that everyone was enjoying the book, although the whole stopping/starting was, perhaps, slightly bewildering at first.

The early section of the novel contains several dates which stand out as historically important and others specific to Ursula. Sometimes the two coincide. Here is a list of dates and some links for historical background.

May 1910

1914

June 1914

First World War Timeline

July 1914

January 1915

20 January 1915

June 1918

11 November 1918

12 November 1918

The question of  whether or not Ursula remembers, or is conscious of what is happening to her arose. At this early stage the answer  is not clearly apparent and those of us who had read further on had to bite our tongues in order not to give the game away. 

Armistice celebrations

We then cast our gaze on the first chapter, Be Ye Men of Valour, and discussed the many possible outcomes of this rainy Munich afternoon (I imagine it's afternoon, there's nothing to say it isn't) full of coffee, cakes and an old Webley Mark V revolver. Yet again, more of that later on.

Rather like the storyline we jumped around again, this time to consider one of the  quotes in the epigraph:

"What if we had the chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
Edward Beresford Todd

How slyly Kate Atkinson slipped in this quote! Next to Nietzsche and Plato, one might think that Edward Beresford Todd were some obscure British philosopher, not one of Ursula's younger brothers.

We talked about this possibility, taking into account our own personal regrets and finally agreed that although we might have done things differently we don't concur with Teddy's wishful thinking. Carrying on from this, we also discussed how our different actions second (or third) time round  might have had other repercussions for those around us. Obviously this idea is central to  the novel and the more we read, the more important it will become.

Other topics included which character we most liked at the moment. The winner, for now, is Sylvie. Will that change? Least liked character went to Maurice, obviously. We also compared the portrayal of female and male characters, but concluded too many of them are still children to do this question justice. Having read the majority of Atkinson's work I can say there are always strong female characters and sometimes strong male ones too. Although that only seems to happen when the male is also the leading character. We concluded that Atkinson has had strong female influences in her own life upon which to draw her characters.

Izzie or Sylvie?

1914 theatre costume. Victoria and Albert Museum

Choose something for Izzie or Sylvie to wear before the war and later

Choose for the children too!

We read the first part of Behind the Scenes - a section on the official Kate Atkinson website where she writes about her background and inspiration.

There was just a few minutes to divvy up the remaining chapters for our next meeting and then it was time to go.

What if? What if? There's plenty to get our teeth into next time.

Up to  chapter December 1923 for Saturday 8th March.