MRS GRUNDY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3212, 6 October 1915, Page 79

MRS GRUNDY.

By E. Hodgkinson,

“Who is Mrs Grundy?” asked a competitor in the impromptu speeches heard a few evenings ago; but he attempted no definite answer to his own “What does she do and what ought to be done to her?” he added, and had something to say under each category. In truth, we all know something of what Mrs Grundy does : she lets none of us alone, but from childhood upwards dictates to us and threatens us with penalties, vague, but all the more dreadful for their vagueness, if we do not implicitly obey her. Two of the competitors expressed themselves utterly ignorant about Mrs Grundy, but I cannot believe they were so fortunate •as not to have made practical acquaintance with her. No, it was merely that they were not aware of her name, as may often happen to us with an individual we know well enough by sight. Mrs Grundy thrusts herself on us by force, and if we are not strong enough to withstand her, dominates our lives, and "will not allow us to call our souls our own. A few years ago the writer took ’'■art in a debate held by a small literary club on the question, ‘‘Should we obey Mrs Grundy?” and, being prepared to support the negative, ‘was greatly taken aback to find that the speakers identified Mrs Grundy with public opinion, and, further, being believers in ‘‘Vox populi, vox Dei,” naturally elevated Mrs Grundy into the position of final authority on all questions of manners and morals. To flout her authority thus was to write yourself down a moral anarchist—a position not a little startling to the debater in question. But another speaker in the negative aptly summed up Mrs Grundy’s titles to this lofty position by saying that to her Mrs Grundy 7 was personified by ‘‘your neighbour looking over your backyard fence, and making uncomplimentary remarks about you.” Most of the speakers in the recent competition evidently had the same opinion about Mrs Grundy 7 , enlarging on her talents as a medler, a kill-joy, a backbiter, and a tyrant. I think this estimate is justified. “What will Mrs Grundy say 7?” always implies she will say something bad; I never heard of her saying good of anyone. She is certainly 7 not loved; but few have courage to disobey 7 her. What is her title to this obedience? Let us see what is the nature of her sway. In the first, place you find her concerned with morals and manners, and in her own opinion she is evidently the only reliable authority 7 on both. But you cannot get her to give reasons for the laws she lay 7 s down. “It is proper to do this; it is wholly improper to do that,” she says. And her devotees silence all arguments with a few set terms: “You must do so; everymno does it. You can’t bo different from other people.” “How can you dream of such a thing? No one does it.” “Of course it’s improper.” “Everyone will be talking about you.” Mrs Grundy is here revealed, as the ideas and conventions about affairs of daily life which happen to rule in your circle. She is not pulbic opinion in any wide sense. She Is very largely concerned with the minor things of life, with" form rather than with substance, and, above all, with appearance rather than reality. She does not trouble herself about politics, and social reform is, of course, a bugbear to her. She thinks that women should keep in their proper place without meddling with politics. She has no definite ideas on national prohibition, but has a quick eye for the brewer’s cart calling at your door, and if by chance she sees Mr Smith coming out of an hotel, sighs and says what a pity he should take to such ways perhaps his wif&’s temper is driving him into them. But Mrs Grundy, as was said the other night, is a very old lady; she has certainly lived since the beginnings of civilisation —indeed. I think savages know her very well. Her aspect is protean. EVery age, every country has its own Mrs Grundy—indeed, every social class and every stage of life. It Is the schoolboy’s Mrs Grundy who tells him that he must not inform on his school-fellows, hut that there is no dishonour in telling lies to his

teacher j* that some lines of conduct are manly, and others, which in the light of another dozen years might seem more deserving of the title, are only fit for a milksop. The working man’s Mrs Grundy will flatly contradict his employer’s; the servant girl’s her mistress’s; but this contradiction makes the voice none the less authoritative. The English middle-class Mrs Grundy is the most widely famed, but other varieties are just as despotic. This union of inflexibility with endless variation js mysterious, but none the less does it exist. Positive as Mrs Grundy Is, deaf apparently to both plea and argument, she can learn—no, I will not say Learn—but she can change, and is perpetually changing. In the days of our grandmothers she thought it improper for women to become doctors or hospital nurses, now she is reconciled to both. She frowned on the bicycle, then ou women riding astride; she was horrified at the idea of women travellers; now she has forgotten her opposition to these and a hundred other things she once thought dreadful.

She is the greatest obstacle to progress. In India she upholds infant marriages, and, of course, is a sworn foe to missionaries—to foreigners in any shape. (Indeed, I think that in every country she is suspicious of foreigners.) In China she tortures and cripples the little girls. “What a horrible end immodest tiling,” she says, “for a woman to have big feet and go striding about like a man!” And if a more enlightened Chinaman than the rest wants to leave the feet of his little daughter unbound, she protests, through the mouths of his wife and female relatives, that he will ruin the poor eirl’s prospects if he has his way; it will be impossible to marry her well ! Everywhere it is women who are Mrs Grundy’s staunchest subjects. In Mohammedan countries she keeps them veiled and secluded; she fetters them everywhere, and they hug their chains.

In some communities We find Mrs Grundy exercising despotic sway in the matters of religious observance. In Scotch communities she still frowns on you if you mow your lawn on Sunday mornings instead of lying in bed, and it is a clangorous thing to be seen with a needle and thread in one’s hand, if it be but for the purpose of making some needed repairs. It is not Mrs Grundy who invents fashions in dress, but she makes men and women conform to fashions when set. True, she reprobates extremes in theory, hiut soon practically condones them. She frowned lately on hobble skirts, on transparent blouses, and low necks for street wear, but soon withdrew her opposition. She is a rigid upholder of propriety in costume, but it is impossible for the inquiring to discover any rule at the back of her dictates of propriety. Till lately she pronounced it indelicate for a lady to show an inch of ankle, but countenanced a most liberal display of bare shoulders and arms in evening attire. In the country she forbade the working farmer’s wife to don her husband’s trousers and leggings while digging potatoes or yarding the cows, and kept her trailing about with skirts nmicl-soaked to the knee. Mrs Grundy is not always wrong—far from it, she is very often right; but she is right in the wrong way. Her dictates are perhaps most useful in matters relating to the social intercourse of men and women —the young especially. She holds, very properly, that there must be restrictions; but here again her rules are arbitrary and capricious. Formerly, for instance—l fancy she has now relaxed in this matter,—-she was absolute in forbidding an unmarried lady to attend balls or places of public resort unchaperoned. But once married, a woman was qualified to act as chaperone, and thus one ‘plight see a mature worldly-wise spinster chaperoned by a bride of 18. Mrs Grundy is often defended as an indispensable censor and social policeman —or policewoman. It is true that she may sometimes supply the lack of wisdom and of principle, and that her restrictions may often prevent the inexperienced from putting themselves into dangerous situations. Sensible people as a rule willingly conform to her precepts in small matters; it saves trouble to do so. And where graver matters are concerned they will remember that it is not enough to abstain from evil —one must abstain from the very appearance of evil. On the other hand, there is danger that the worship of Mrs Grundy may obscure the existence of genuine authority in matters of conduct. This was brought home to the writer on the occasion of a book discussion some time after the debate alluded to. The plot 'of the story turned on the ardent attachment between hero and heroine, formed when the former was ignorant that the heroine was bound by an uncongenial marriage. The writer was somewhat startled to find that to several of the speakers Mrs Grundy was the sole obstacle to the happiness of hero and heroine. The alternative to Mrs Grundy is not lawlessness, but law. She personifies not jaw 7, but convention, which may in the first instance have been founded on experience, but which tends to become stultifying. Cultivate moral principle and good sense, and you can dispense with Mrs Grundy. You need not go out of your way to defy her, but if she bars your w 7 ay in what you conscientiously believe the right course, do not he turned aside; go on—walk through her !