Blue Stockings

It has been a while since I saw any plays. Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis had a good thing going for a while, where they gave students discounted tickets but alas no more. They have something for under-30s but I haven't really checked it out although I should probably take advantage of offers like that while I can. I've seen some interesting plays for really cheap tickets and once even for free right in front of the stage for a phenomenal play whose name I don't remember now. I recently had the chance to watch Blue Stockings at Guthrie for a Gender and Policy class I am in. We decided to go a few weeks ago and at that time it had seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. 

But of course, closer to the actual date, with all the deadlines and dreaded reviews pouring in, I had a moment of deep despair when I looked at the 2.5 hours play time and steady rain outside (although the smell of rain hitting earth is one of my favorite things and I only recently learned about mitti attar). Bad plays are bad but long bad plays are the worst. It turned out to be fairly entertaining and I found the time bearable (although a classmate of mine was grimacing in deep pain and not without reason - the script was trying a bit too hard and subtlety definitely wasn't a key ingredient). The play is set in 1896 and is about the first year a college in Britain decides to accept women. I think they used the physical theater space well - I found the  design on the floor - chalkboard replicas with equations - whimsy and unusual. The attempt at talking about how even within the struggle for women's rights class was a factor was valiant but I don't think they saw it through. We never learn what happens to Maeve, the brightest pupil in the first cohort of women at Girton College in Britain, who is sent home after her mother dies and there is no one to look after the children of the family.

The yellow/sepia tinted view from the 9th floor

I didn't know that blue stockings is what they disparagingly called women who were educated and intellectual. Some of the themes still felt familiar - people saying that women have physiological functions that are most important or women are best at having babies, women aren't biologically or mentally capable of doing certain things, leave the important things to men (and things are structured in a way that it happens more often than you know). Even though this isn't the specific history of the rights I have as a woman, it is part of the larger struggle for women's rights. I was glad to have seen the play for it but also a little sad because it reminds me of the question I have as to why do so many people (including women) that I know don't respect women's rights or feminism or believe we are in a post-feminist age (!) which I find as absurd as thinking we are in a post racial world. So many of the rights and liberties and choices they enjoy come from these concepts and yet feminism is as dirty a word as you can find. Women take such perverse pride in saying that they don't identify as feminists and I understand the pressures and challenges, but to me it is like disowning your heritage. It is probably telling that I feel far more attached to this history and heritage of mine than any based on patriarchal concepts, which is so much religion and culture (not all, not all but a lot). I don't think we do women any favors by either revering or reviling them - simple respect for women as people, not as mothers, daughters, sisters, goddesses is what I want but it is incredibly hard as a concept. It is not surprising - patriarchy, sexism, a violent barely-contained inferno of sexual tensions, all of these conflate to make India the fourth most dangerous place in the world to be a woman. Sometimes its sobering to remember all the things we take for granted are so hard won and there is so much more work to be done.

Another view of the city