The mother is in the fire of composition, the baby is in the water of the bath!

The term bluestocking (bas-bleu in French) was used to ridicule the burgeoning feminist literary movement of the day. Daumier's series on the bluestockings portrayed these women as ugly, scornful, unhappy, and inadequate as housekeepers. These rebellious women also supposedly ignored their husbands and children while pursuing their personal ambitions. Here a bluestocking is so engrossed in her writing that she has not noticed that her child has fallen headfirst into the bath.