by Jane Robinson
abridged by Miranda Davies
read by Miriam Margolyes
Broadcast Monday 10 to Friday 14 August 2009 (Book Of The Week)
160/44; 79 MB; sound quality excellent
Bluestockings tells the remarkable story of the first British women who, against all odds, went on to get a university education.
Cambridge University is 800 years old this year, yet women had to wait until the end of the 19th century before they could enroll there - and, even then, the odds were stacked against them.
The average female brain was considered small and weak compared with that of a man. Leading doctors warned that if women studied too hard, they were at risk of infertility and madness. Even some 30 years later, when the Cambridge Senate held a vote on whether women students should be granted full membership of the university, there was a full-scale riot by male students, with effigies of bluestockings set on fire. When these "petticoat pioneers" did get to university, they were faced with lecturers who refused to acknowledge them, and media caricatures of them as tweedy creatures with deviant minds.
Despite this prejudice, the bluestockings persevered and paved the way for the generations to come. By the Thirties, women were emerging from universities as anything from aviation engineers to diplomats.
Bluestockings tells the stories, in their own words, of these early female students, both the famous - Vera Brittain, Dorothy L Sayers, Barbara Pymm, Gertrude Bell - and the ordinary women, as well as some of the glorious bluestocking eccentrics.
It is a fascinating portrait of university life for the first bluestockings -"undergraduette" fashions, the "pashes", cocoa parties, sex and suffragettes - as well as an inspirational story of plucky defiance, determination and sometimes heartbreak.
Part 1 - This episode tells story of the sacrifices made by the first young women to arrive at Cambridge in 1869, as well as the pioneers who helped to get them there. And why the first Bluestocking wasn't a woman at all.
Part 2 - Faced with the eternal chaperone problem, prejudice from lecturers and the attentions of the so-called 'odd fish', life isn't always easy for the first 'undergraduette'. Yet while, even as late as 1897, women students at Cambridge face burnt effigies and fireworks being hurled at them, the bluestockings begin, quietly, to make their mark.
Part 3 - The glamour of the graduette and bluestocking fashion. As the first few decades of university education for women slip by, the image of the drab, maverick bluestocking has begun to metamorphose into a far more luminous creature, the 'undergraduette'. Suddenly, by the 1920s, women students are quite the thing, and prim bluestocking fashion even takes on a hint of glamour.
Yet, even at Cambridge University in 1920, one item of student fashion is still unavailable to bluestockings. Since they are not permitted to receive degrees, women are still not allowed to wear the university gown.
Producer: Justine Willett
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Claire Webb, Radio Times reviewer: Infertile and insane - that was the fate of "bluestockings", according to a Harvard lecture in the 1870s. The unbecoming nickname was first used a century earlier to describe a group of learned women who met in London salons, although the knitted hosiery in question belonged to a man. Mind you, their predecessors made plenty of fashion faux pas, as Jane Robinson's playful account of female university education reveals. Impeccably read by Miriam Margolyes, it chronicles those weird and wonderful early days when one professor would ignore his female students, while another proposed to every last one. Then there were the arbitrary rules, protests, chaperones, cocoa parties and strict instructions about what to do in the unlucky event of male attention (look him cynically up and down).
Parts 1-3 of 5
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Part 4 - Although academic success comes easily to many bluestockings, some still find relationships something of a stumbling block. Friendships, crushes and full-blown affairs with both students and tutors become treacherous for those young women who have barely spoken to a man before. Meanwhile, from fighting for academic equality, it is only a short step to agitating for political enfranchisment. The suffragette movement that is taking off across the country soon makes its mark on academia.
Part 5 - Although more and more women graduate during the 1920s and 30s, the Great Depression reinforces the pecking order, prioritising jobs for men. While critics begin to wonder whether academia is breeding white elephants, the bluestockings remain undaunted. While all too many join the teaching profession, others venture down unexplored career paths as diplomats, aviation engineers, writers and lawyers, all paving the way for future generations of bright young women.
Parts 4-5 of 5
Bluestockings - 4of5.mp3
Bluestockings - 5of5.mp3