In short, our feelings about the candidate are as contradictory as they were about the first lady. I argued that Hillary was a modern-day version of Isabel Archer, the novel's heroine. The two of them represent the appealing and repugnant sides, respectively, of women of a certain class dedicated to social improvement in late19th-century America. My friend was right. Hillary is a bluestocking, and that is why she elicits these deeply conflicted responses.
Bluestockings always have, all the way back to their first appearance.
And yet they were depicted in newspapers and novels as joyless, sexless taskmistresses intent on imposing their will on others. Hillary is neither joyless nor sexless. She is genuinely devoted to her family, and she has been an energetic force for change at every institution she has been a part of, from her high school to nonprofit organizations to the highest levels of government. It Takes a Village,' had the earnest overexplicitness of a missionary addressing the lower orders. One might expect that sort of response from voters who had reason to feel threatened by her, but the fact that even those voters who might otherwise identify with her are so put off suggests how little some of our attitudes have changed since the bluestockings' debut.