The reception of the bluestockings by eighteenth-century German women writers.

Enlightenment Germany had no contemporary equivalent to the English Bluestocking circle: a network of well-regarded, scholarly women who sought to further women's interests through their social and literary activities. The impact of the Bluestockings and their writings on German women writers is assessed here for the first time, with specific reference to Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807) and Julie Clodius (1750-1805). La Roche and Clodius translated Bluestocking texts for the particular benefit of their countrywomen. They were careful to present their translations in a manner that would make them acceptable to their day while, crucially, not sacrificing all of the feminist ideals that the English texts express. (HB)

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Compared to their counterparts in other European countries, women in Enlightenment Germany made only tentative appeals for education and autonomy. Germany lacks beacons of early feminism such as Mary Astell (1666-1731), Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793), and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). Nonetheless, the rise of the woman writer in the second half of the eighteenth century coincided with an increase of interest in European culture among the privileged classes in Germany. Visits abroad became popular for both men and women of means. Travel literature and translations from French, English, Italian, and Spanish constituted an ever-larger portion of the literary market. It is not surprising that women writers were influenced by this cosmopolitan outlook and took particular note of the situation of their sex among other nations.

I want to consider here how two women, Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807) and Julie Clodius (1750-1805), responded to the English Bluestocking circle. Both La Roche and Clodius wrote about the erudite Englishwomen and translated their work. An examination of the role played by La Roche and Clodius in the reception of the Bluestockings will demonstrate how women writers in Germany looked to pre-eminent women in other countries as they themselves gained opportunities to enter a more public sphere. La Roche and Clodius framed the Bluestocking texts in certain ways to make them accord better with less liberal attitudes toward learned women prevalent in their own country. However, not all the feminist impact of the texts is lost. Most significantly, La Roche and Clodius underline the possibilities for female intellectual community and female intellectual tradition both abroad and at home. This constitutes evidence of a feminist consciousness impinging on women in Germany at an earlier stage than might be expected.

The Bluestockings have been the focus of much research in recent years (e.g., Myers; Kelly) and it is important, first of all, to summarize the distinctiveness of their achievements and to define their particular brand of feminism. The Bluestockings emerged in the 1750s as a group of predominantly single or widowed middle- and upper-class women who strove to play a part in the intellectual life of the day. Their activities were centered around the London salons of Frances Boscawen (1719-1805), Elizabeth Vesey (1715-1791), and the so-called `Queen of the Blues' Elizabeth Montagu (1720-1800). Members of both sexes met in a strictly platonic spirit to substitute rational conversation for the more trivial pastimes usually expected of society ladies. This set their assemblies apart from the erotically charged salon model of seventeenth-century France. The women kept company on equal terms with men such as Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Horace Walpole, and Joshua Reynolds. (1)

The name `Bluestocking' seems to have been first associated with Benjamin Stillingfleet, who attended the gatherings in stockings made from blue worsted instead of the conventional black or white silk. It came to denote a symbolic rejection of accepted social expectations for women, and members of the group later referred to their "blue stocking doctrine" and "blue stocking philosophy" (Myers 8). Beyond the social meetings in London, the women established an extensive network of contacts that they maintained through visits and correspondence. They encouraged each other to publish and also acted as patrons of both male and female writers. The poet William Cowper, for example, endeavored to ingratiate himself with Elizabeth Montagu through his poem "On Mrs Montagu's Feather Hangings." Montagu did indeed underwrite his Iliad project by signing a subscription list for the translation and sending him an encouraging letter (Kelly, Bluestocking Feminism 1: lxiv). Some of the Bluestockings were active in public life, notably as philanthropists who were particularly eager to help less fortunate women. (2)

The Bluestockings published a range of works, despite inhibitions about entering a male-dominated realm and earning money through their pens. (3) For example, the famed polyglot Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806) produced annotated translations of French and Italian criticism (both 1739), the first complete English version of Epictetus (1758), and two collections of her own poems (1738 and 1762). Montagu's main production was her Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear (1769), which defended the national bard against attacks by Voltaire. Montagu persuaded Hester Chapone (1721-1801) to publish her Letters on the Improvement of the Mind: Addressed to a Young Lady (1773), an extremely popular educational tract, which was reprinted at least sixteen times in the next twenty-five years. Carter made known to the public the theological and didactic essays of Catherine Talbot (1721-1770) by issuing them posthumously at her own expense. Among the women who later had connections with the coterie were the writers Anna Barbauld (1743-1824), Fanny Burney