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The feisty nature of Scarlett is about the frustrations of clever women.
Her bold scheming is seen through John Watson’s kindly Victorian eyes. She beguiles, bullies, and bewilders him. Her view of events would be her struggles with the men who obstructed, diminished, and denigrated women.
Scarlett suffers the restrictions and assumptions made about educated, intelligent, independent women in Victorian England. She rejects negative and unjustified comparisons with her famous brother.
Her story stands in contrast to the viewpoint of Dr Watson.
Scarlett has not only to use her intelligence and expertise, but also to navigate the prejudices of the male establishment of the day.
The decent John Watson is her friend and foil.
Scarlett took her degree in Archaeology, a subject that was finding new ground. She became an academic at Cambridge in the recently founded womens’ college Newnham. Archaeology was not regarded as a serious subject and so was available to young women, whereas Medicine and Mathematics continued as the preserve of men. Despite the single subject of her degree she was a polymath and fulminated at lack of appreciation of her other talents.
Academic women came to be called Blue Stockings by the men who expected little of women beyond the management of the household. The original Society of Blue Stockings was a gathering of ladies learned in and wishing to talk of, poetry, literature, and the arts.
We can imagine the term being passed for Scarlett, but not in her hearing one supposes.