Talk:Bluestocking
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this word appears in nietzche's genealogy of morals "one painful night of a single hysterical bluestocking" must be a different definition. anyone?
[edit] Euripides reference
There is a reference to blue-stockings in the play Hippolytus by Euripides. Does anyone know the true date of origin for this term, since it must be before the 15th century?
- The reference to the blue-stocking by Euripides is in the Great Didactic by Comenius. Comenius added in the blue-stocking refernce to suit his needs. The actual line is "I hate a clever woman."
[edit] History of the name of the Bluestockings
There is more to the story of the bluestockings, in fact a man may well have been pivotal in the naming. His name was Benjamin Stillingfleet. The ladies who originally founded the group we now know as the blue stockings were in the habit of asking esteemed and respected men to come and have petiticoteries or discussions with the group on a regular basis. Samuel Johnson was one and another was Benjamin Stillingfleet. Initially Stillingfleet declined the invitation as he was very poor and did not have black stockings, which were the appropriate and accepted formal dress for men of the time. On hearing why he had declined one of the members told him to come as he was, and he did. Here, the story diverges and there are two popular forms - one is that the husband of one of the members, Admiral Edward Boscawen was highly derisive of his wife's "literary pretensions" and labelled the group in a derogatory manner "The Blue Stocking Society" in an allusion to Stillingfleets poverty. The other is that the ladies were so impressed by Stillingfleet that they decided to adopt the blue stockings both as a mark of respect for him and a way of flouting society's norms. This not to detract from the club of Venice in the 1400s which was known by the name "Della Calza" or "of the Stockings" and it is entirely probable that the 18th century persons were in fact referring to it by using the term the Blue Stockings. In a nut shell, no-one seems to be exactly sure about where the name came from, but to leave Stillingfleet out ignores part of what made the Blue Stockings successful and that was support from educated men of the time, such as Johnson, Stillingfleet, Bysshe-Shelley, and Lyttleton, to name but a few.
Any chance we could get a source for the above history?
[edit] Bluestocking
Here is a bit found in old church papers.
During the seventeenth centaury, when churchmen struggled over where the authority of God rested—with the Pope or with the King, or with the people—the poor but freedom loving Covenanters from Scotland wore unbleached woolen stockings in contrast to the affluent Episcopalians who wore stockings dyed black or bleached white. The bluish tint of the untreated woolen stockings gave the name “Bluestocking” to these Presbyterians. Today, the football teams of Presbyterian College are known as the ‘Bluestockings.
