Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Reginas Maids of Honour, Daniel Maclise: 1836
Click images or captions to view pages
Reginas Maids of Honour, Daniel Maclise: 1836 Return
While the viiews of the conservative Hannah More were very limited
in understanding her society and of ameliorating the views of those
not wealthy, her conservative views rehabilitated the views of Bluestockings.
Hannah More firmly established an association of "Victorian family values"
with Bluestockings. Well-educated women were once again viewed as legitimate
and respectable contributors to social, intellectual, and aesthetic culture.
Thus in "Regina's Maids of Honour" by Daniel Maclise (1836), we find a
very polite group at a tea table of middle class domesticity, served by a Black
servant in livery. In other words, Bluestockings a la Hannah More represent the
bourgeois, supporting enslaved servants (the kind of politics they can comprehend).
Now Bluestockings are fully acceptable in English society: they have become
self-satisfied empty chatter-boxes, capable of serving in the bedroom once again!
Jane Austen need not write a book about them as she already wrote that book.
Website Terms of Use