What Is to Be Done? · Chapter
XII: A Digression Concerning Blue Stockings explained
The narrator addresses the 'sapient reader' who criticizes blue stockings as dull and tedious.
What happens
The narrator addresses the 'sapient reader' who criticizes blue stockings as dull and tedious. The narrator turns the critique back on the reader, arguing that the true blue stocking is the man who pretentiously discusses literature and science without genuine understanding, and that such men are far more common than women blue stockings. The chapter concludes by distinguishing those who merely affect intellectualism from those who genuinely pursue their own affairs.
Themes in this chapter
Critique of Bourgeois Society
The narrator satirizes the 'sapient reader' as a pretentious blue stocking, exposing the hypocrisy and superficial intellectualism of bourgeois society.
Key passages
“A blue stocking! an extreme case of blue stocking! I can't endure a blue stocking. A blue stocking is dull and tedious!”
The narrator mocks the reader's complaint about blue stockings, suggesting the reader himself is the true bore.
The narrator turns the reader's criticism back on him, revealing the reader's own pretentiousness.
“The blue stocking, with an unreasonable affectation, talks with great self-satisfaction about literary and scientific matters of which he does not know beans, and speaks not because he is interested, but because he wants to show off wits...”
The narrator defines a blue stocking as someone who pretends to knowledge they lack, speaking only to appear clever.
This definition highlights the theme of false intellectualism versus genuine engagement.
“And those with a live purpose who occupy themselves with anything, no matter what, no matter how they may be dressed, whether they wear a woman's dress or a man's, these are simply people who attend to their own affairs, and that's all there is of it.”
People who genuinely pursue their own interests, regardless of gender or appearance, are simply attending to their own business.
The narrator contrasts genuine purpose with the affectation of blue stockings.