Jessica Swale's Blue Stockings

A guide for studying and staging the play

Jessica Swale, Lois Jeary

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781848426238
• eBook ISBN: 9781780019062
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Drama

Jessica Swale's Blue Stockings is the empowering and surprising story of four young women fighting for their right to a university education in a world that assumed women belonged at home. First produced professionally at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013, and a sell-out success, it is now regularly performed by theatre groups in the UK and beyond, and widely studied by GCSE Drama students.

This Page to Stage guide, written by the playwright, who also directed the first production at RADA, along with her assistant director Lois Jeary, is packed with contextual information, scene-by-scene and character breakdowns, and personal insights into the world of the play and the real lives that inspired it.

An invaluable resource for those studying and staging the play, it takes you through the entire production process, considering each of the elements in turn, from sound and music to design and rehearsals. You'll also find notes from the original rehearsal process, extracts from working diaries, and interviews with key members of the creative team. Throughout, there are hints and tips on staging, and helpful games and exercises to bring the play to life on the stage and in the classroom.

Highly accessible and uniquely authoritative, it is the indispensible guide for anyone studying, teaching or performing the play.

Blue Stockings
In Rehearsal

The World of the Play

Blue Stockings is set in 1896–7 – a time when Queen Victoria was on the throne, the colonies of the British Empire spread from Newfoundland in the northern hemisphere to New Zealand in the southern, and only men who owned or rented property above a certain value had the right to vote.

In terms of both the law and the way society viewed them, Victorian women were second-class citizens; so the women in this play have a great deal to fight against, if their aim is to be taken seriously as intelligent citizens who might like the chance to work.

Understanding the historical context is crucial to telling the story of the play. Although the play is firmly set in Victorian England, there is a contrast between the expectations this sets up and the way its female characters behave. They are not your typical Victorians, and therein lies the drama. They are women who defy the conventions of their time; Jessica says the characters are ‘bursting out of their corsets – trying to move forward before their peers have caught up. It is important that, whilst they inhabit a Victorian world, the women’s energies and sensibilities are ahead of their time. That’s where the interesting juxtaposition lies.’

The actor, director or designer’s primary task is to interpret and bring to life the characters and text. Blue Stockings features both real and fictional characters and incidents, so thoughtfully applied research can illuminate those interpretations. Everyone uses research in different ways and, although some might do it purely for their own information, establishing ways to share findings amongst a cast ensures that everyone works from the same starting point.

In rehearsals, Jessica often gives each cast member a particular topic to research and then asks them to present their findings to the rest of the company, so that all can share in building the world of the play. It is important that actors choose a topic that relates to their character so that the research is useful rather than simply academic. Jessica also encourages actors to find a playful, fun, inventive way of sharing their findings, rather than simply giving a talk full of dry information. They may present it in an exercise, as a playlet or as a chat show. When rehearsing Hannah Cowley’s eighteenth-century comedy of manners The Belle’s Stratagem, they even had one research session that spoofed an episode of Made in Chelsea! The more palatable and active the information becomes, the more it will go in.

Here is a list of suggested research topics, followed by an introduction to some key themes:

• The history of Girton College – including Elizabeth Welsh and her predecessor, Emily Davies.

• The daily routine at Girton.

• The riot and the vote on women’s graduation rights.

• The role of a university lecturer at Cambridge.

• What courses consisted of at Cambridge.

• What social lives were like in Cambridge.

• The geography of Cambridge – the town, the locations in the play, and what there was to do.

• Social class at Cambridge and beyond.

• Famous Cambridge students and their experiences.

• The science of the play, and astronomy in particular.

• Hysteria – the study of it and what people believed about it.

• Relationships – marriage, courting and expectations.

• Suffrage.

• Politics of the 1890s.

• Arts of the 1890s.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

‘Under exclusively man-made laws women have been reduced to the most abject condition of legal slavery in which it is possible for human beings to be held.’¹

Florence Fenwick Miller, in a speech at the National Liberal Club, 1890

The women in Blue Stockings defy society’s expectations of them. In order to communicate this spirit and zeal, actors need to have an understanding of what those historical constraints were. It is also helpful to appreciate that the play is set in a time when the position of women in society was starting to shift and campaigns for women’s rights were gathering momentum.

The nineteenth century was a time of division between the sexes that crystallised in the doctrine of men and women occupying separate spheres. The man’s role was considered to be engaging in public and economic life – going out to work, being the wage earner and representing the family in matters of law or politics. Meanwhile, the woman’s place was in the home with all its attendant domestic responsibilities, such as cooking, needlework and, perhaps most importantly, raising children. As the morally superior and yet physically weaker sex, middle-class Victorian women were to be shielded from the corrupting influence of society at large.

This was demonstrated through the rights that women were afforded. Before the 1880s, when a woman married, her property passed to her husband’s ownership and her individual legal identity ceased because she and her husband were considered to be one person under the law. In 1857, an Act of Parliament had made it easier for married couples to obtain a divorce; however, it ensured that doing so was much easier for men than women. For a man to obtain a divorce he needed only to prove that his wife had been unfaithful; for a woman to get a divorce she had to prove her husband’s infidelity and cruelty. Historically, the custody of children also passed to men. That had gradually started to change from 1839 onwards, when women started to acquire rights of access and custody for children in certain cases; however, a husband essentially retained rights over his wife’s body and the products of that ownership, which included children.

Many of those gradual gains in the legal status of women resulted from organised movements and campaigns. Arguably the biggest movement of the latter half of the nineteenth century was the campaign to grant women the right to vote. At the start of the century only a small percentage of wealthy men were entitled to vote; as the years went on, however, a series of reforms extended that right to more and more men. In 1866, a petition was presented to Parliament calling for women to have the same political rights as men, but the measure was defeated. Groups supporting women’s suffrage emerged across the country and in 1897 a number of them joined together to form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, led by Millicent Fawcett.

The campaign for women’s suffrage can be broadly categorised into the ‘suffragists’, who campaigned through non-confrontational means, such as petitions and public meetings, and the ‘suffragettes’, who believed that radical methods were needed to achieve results. The Women’s Social and Political Union, founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, was a militant organisation that advocated for disturbances, such as window-breaking and arson, to command the attention of the press, politicians and public.² As a result of their actions, hundreds of women were imprisoned, and the many who went on hunger strike endured force-feeding by the prison authorities. In 1918 the vote was granted to women over the age of thirty who met certain property qualifications. Then in 1928 the franchise was extended to all women over the age of twenty-one, granting women the vote on the same terms as men.

One of the highest profile opponents of the suffragists’ cause was Queen Victoria, and the significance of her reign to attitudes regarding women’s rights must not be underestimated. She was perceived as the epitome of womanly virtue during her reign from 1837 to 1901. Despite her being the most powerful woman in the world, various comments attributed to Queen Victoria suggest that she thought women should stick to their domestic sphere. Victoria was devoted to her husband, Albert, and they had nine children together; however, when Albert died at the age of forty-two, she went into deep mourning and resisted public engagements. At that time, the Queen’s withdrawal from public life attracted criticism and added weight to arguments that women were too volatile for public office.

The nineteenth century was even harder for women at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum. Working-class women had no choice but to work, often in domestic service or factories, to support their families, yet hours were long and wages were low. Housing conditions for the poor were crowded, although the only alternative for people who could not support themselves was to go into a workhouse. Gradually, however, working women organised into groups. In 1888, women and girls working at the Bryant and May match factory in London went on strike over unfair dismissal and their working conditions; eventually their demands were met and their strike led to the formation of the Union of Women Match Makers. Occasionally women from more privileged backgrounds had to work, usually as governesses, teachers or nurses, and some of those women were to form the vanguard for women’s education.

In the first half of the century, the education of women in England was entirely piecemeal. A lucky girl may have been allowed to join her brother’s lessons with his tutor, or attend the local church school, while others may have benefited from the instruction provided by governesses, but generally girls were schooled in only those ‘accomplishments’ needed for a blissful domestic life: music, drawing, dancing and needlework. Gradually, secondary schools were established to provide a more rounded education to girls, and by the end of the century universities and colleges were enabling women to study at a level never previously available to them.

GIRTON COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

‘A flowing river is no doubt more troublesome to manage than a tranquil pool; but pools, if let alone too long, are apt to become noxious, as well as useless.’³

Emily Davies, founder of Girton College, The Higher Education of Women, 1866

In 1869, Emily Davies co-founded the first English college to offer a degree-level education to women: Girton College.⁴ Initially, the college’s five female students lived in Hitchin, a town thirty miles south of Cambridge, taking classes from Cambridge lecturers who were supportive of their cause, but in 1873 the college and its fifteen students relocated to the outskirts of Cambridge. The building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse in a neo-Tudor style constructed out of red brick, and even the architecture seemed determined to challenge the status quo: in contrast to a lot of the older colleges, the rooms at Girton were arranged along corridors rather than around staircases.⁵

In the meantime, Newnham College had been set up as a home for women to live in while they attended lectures at Cambridge, yet the approaches and profiles of the two institutions differed markedly. Whereas Newnham allowed women to study at the level and pace that suited them, Girton aimed for its students to match the men from the outset. Emily Davies believed that the curriculum offered to women should reflect what was being offered to men, so the students at Girton took preliminary examinations before starting out on their chosen Tripos (honours degree).⁶ They did so despite having no official recognition from the university, which took until 1881 to allow the women to sit its examinations formally (and until 1948 to award them degrees).

Almost from the outset, the University of Cambridge lagged behind other institutions in terms of women’s education. In 1878, London University became the first to award women degrees, and affiliated colleges around the country offered women opportunities denied to them at the country’s leading academic institutions. What accounts for Cambridge’s reluctance to allow female students to study and graduate on equal terms to men? The university’s tremendous history and the weight of tradition must certainly have played their parts.

The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 and is made up of constituent colleges, the eldest of which is Peterhouse. Trinity College (where all the male characters in Blue Stockings, except Will, study or teach) was founded by Henry VIII in 1546, more than three hundred years before Girton was established. Cambridge therefore represents centuries of tradition and of educating the country’s male leaders, scientists and poets. Until 1926 the highest governing body in the university was the Senate, which was comprised of all graduates.

From speaking to the King’s College archivist, Jessica discovered that it was not until the 1880s that King’s began to admit boys through merit. Before that it was entirely through privilege; if you went to Harrow or Eton, you did not have to sit the exam to get in, you just got given a place. In 1896, eighty per cent of the Fellows (the role that Mr Banks is offered at Trinity) would have been Etonians, and boys often brought their servants with them to college. She also discovered that King’s College voted to allow lecturers to decide individually whether to allow women into their lectures or not, rather than imposing a blanket policy upon them.

When the question of admitting women to the university was first raised, it was perceived as a threat to tradition. Then, as now, Cambridge provided students with a rigorous, highly academic education and was one of the most respected higher-education establishments in the world. Admitting women, who would most likely not have had the same level of schooling as their male counterparts, posed a risk to that reputation. Moreover, the university was so ingrained in the livelihoods of the British Establishment that, for some, the fact that the women’s colleges admitted students from a more diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds threatened the privilege they enjoyed – and the British class structure as a whole.

For the women who got to Girton, it nonetheless provided opportunities to study and socialise in ways that had been hitherto unimaginable. Along with those freedoms, there came responsibilities, and students found their days and nights regimented and regulated by college authorities, who were cautious not to allow any scandal to derail their mission.⁷ It was also not unusual for a student’s education to be interrupted by pressures from home. For example, Constance Jones, who later succeeded Elizabeth Welsh as Mistress of Girton, was in her mid-to-late twenties when she matriculated in 1875. Jones was the eldest of ten children an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Blue Stockings in Rehearsal
• Blue Stockings in Production
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary of Historical Figures
• Endnotes
• Page to Stage Series
• About the Authors
• Copyright Information