bluestockings
Scholarly female circles
Bluestockings are intellectual or literary women, originally referring to members of 18th-century London salons where serious conversation replaced card games.
The term arose when a male attendee wore informal blue worsted stockings instead of formal black silk.
It later became mildly derisive, suggesting a woman more interested in books than in feminine pursuits: She was dismissed as a bluestocking by those who found her learning threatening.
Learned, studious person
- eruditeProfoundly knowledgeable
- learnedHaving much knowledge
- well-readKnowledgeable through literature
- literaryOf written works
bookish · cultivated · educated · knowledgeable · studious · academic · intellectual · lettered
Grooming establishment or gathering
- EnlightenmentEra prioritizing reason over dogma
- 18th-centuryThe seventeen hundreds
- correspondenceExchanged written communication
- lettersAlphabetic characters or mail
gentility · society · debate · conversation · patronage · assemblies · hostess · wit
Advocacy for sex equality
- suffrageRight to cast ballots
- emancipationRelease from legal bondage
- equalitySame status for all
- advocacyPleading for a cause
rights · pioneering · trailblazer · reform · progressivism · liberation · independence · agency
Origin of written work
- novelsExtended prose fiction
- poetryMetrical literary composition
- proseUnversified language
- essaysShort nonfiction prose pieces
criticism · writing · reading · classics · literature · letters · published · penmanship
Excessively concerned with minor rules
- pretentiousFalsely grand or important
- bookishDevoted to reading
- unfeminineContrary to womanly traits
- spinsterUnmarried older woman
priggish · stuffy · frumpy · highbrow · stereotype · caricature · satirized
scholar
Learned, studious person
- eruditeProfoundly knowledgeable
- learnedHaving much knowledge
- well-readKnowledgeable through literature
literary · bookish · cultivated · educated · knowledgeable · studious · academic · intellectual · lettered · scholarly
salon
Grooming establishment or gathering
- EnlightenmentEra prioritizing reason over dogma
- 18th-centuryThe seventeen hundreds
- correspondenceExchanged written communication
letters · gentility · society · debate · conversation · patronage · assemblies · hostess · wit · refinement
feminism
Advocacy for sex equality
- suffrageRight to cast ballots
- emancipationRelease from legal bondage
- equalitySame status for all
advocacy · rights · pioneering · trailblazer · reform · progressivism · liberation · independence · agency · empowerment
authorship
Origin of written work
essays · criticism · writing · reading · classics · literature · letters · published · penmanship · wit
pedantic
Excessively concerned with minor rules
- pretentiousFalsely grand or important
- bookishDevoted to reading
- unfeminineContrary to womanly traits
spinster · priggish · stuffy · frumpy · highbrow · stereotype · caricature · satirized
- feminismfeminism, feminist theory, gender equality, women's rights, feminist novels
- girls' educationgirls' schools, girls' education, finishing school, finishing schools, convent school
- Literary CirclesBloomsbury Group, Harlem Renaissance, Beat Generation, Lost Generation, salon
- Literary Groupswriting group, writers group, poetry circle, writing circle, writers workshop
- education historypublic schooling, education reforms, school reform, educational reforms, one-room school
- women's writingVirginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath
bluestockingsdebutantes
Women debuting socially
bimbos · anti-intellectuals · socialites · housewives · coquettes
bluestockingsdomestic goddesses
Idealized skilled homemakers
bluestockingsignoramuses
Profoundly uninformed persons
philistines · dunces · illiterates · simpletons · lowbrows