Amazons, Bluestockings and Crones: A Feminist Dictionary

Review
Formerly titled The Feminist Dictionary, Amazons, Bluestockings and Crones now sports a rich, descriptive title much like the words defined within. This colorful and wealthy dictionary examines, explains and redefines many ideas and terms pertaining to women and patriarchal society. Each word is placed within the context of its evolving meaning-dating back to its origin and weaving through the years into its present day connotation. Cheris Kramarae and Paula A. Treichler have compiled a reference resource filled with fascinating information contributed by many women. This lexicon is destined to be a classic. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by SH
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
BLUESTOCKINGS
Viewy women who gather for artistic, literary, intellectual and witty exchanges. Critics have used the term to refer to learned, and thus in their minds, unfeminine and pretentious women. The origin of the term is in dispute but was evidently first used in the 1750s to refer to women and men in London who gathered for conversation; one of the people wore blue worsted instead of black silk stockings. The women who attended were first derisively called bluestockings and Blue Stocking Ladies and later Bluestockings and Blues. The terms were thus first used to denote informal or homely dress and then to refer to intellectual, literary, or learned women. To "wear your blues" became a metaphor for evenings of intellectual and witty conversation. As the term bluestocking became associated with the women who held salons and who put their energies and emotions into their work with each other, it became a term of abuse, with connotations of snob and misfit. The bluestockings, excluded from politics, law, education and employment because they were female, formed an alternative, knowledgeable, supportive, competent and intellectually self-sufficient group. There are many bluestockings today, learning, reading, writing, and exchanging ideas in women's groups.
Wife-Beating
A by-product of the Christian view of woman as man's property. (Barbara G. Walker 1983, 593)