| | | | Almost all histories and mythologies embody the idea of a | race of grim females. Whether as fabulous and complex | monsters, like the Sphinx and the Harpies, or in the more | human forms of the Fates and the Furies, unsexed women | have been universally recognised forming part of the | system of nature, and to be accepted among the stranger | manifestations of human life. Yet it is hard to understand | why they should exist at all. As moral

"sports,"

| extravagances, exaggerations, they are so far interesting to | the anthropologist; but, as women with definite duties and | fixed functions, nothing can be less admirable. They are | even worse than effeminate men ~~ which is saying | everything. The grim female must be carefully | distinguished from the masculine woman, for they are by | no means essentially the same, though the types may run | into each other, and sometimes do. But the masculine | woman, if not grim but only Amazonian, has often much | that is fine and beautiful in her, as we see in her great | prototype Pallas Athene; but the grim female | pur sang is never noble, never | beautiful; and the only meaning of her existence ~~ the | only mission she seems sent into the world to fulfil ~~ is | that of serving as a warning to the young as to what to | avoid. The grim female is not necessarily an old maid, as | would appear likely at first sight. We find her of all | conditions indifferently ~~ as maid, wife, widow, as mother | and childless alike ~~ and we do not find that her condition | in any way affects her character. If she is born grim, she | remains grim to the end; and neither marriage nor | motherhood modifies her. The grim female of novelists is | generally an old maid; but a caricature, painted in the | broadest lines and from the outsides of things. She is | emphatically an odd woman; odd in her dress, her mode, | her sate. She wears a flapping cap, skimpy skirts, and rusty | brown mittens on her bony hands; she has a passionate | aversion to men and matrimony; and she lives queerly | behind a barricaded house door, with a small slavey, or an | elderly female afflicted with deafness, to do her work and | bear the brunt of her temper. But she is always odd, and | unmarried, and unfashionable, and unlike everybody else, | and could never be mistaken for an ordinary woman from | the first moment when she appears on the page to the last | paragraph of her existence. Now the grim female of real | life may be one of the most conventional of her sex; she is | one who rules her household with a rod of iron carefully | wrought after the pattern of her neighbours' rods, and to | whom a dish set awry, or the second-best china instead of | the best, counts for as great a moral delinquency in her | servants as a breach of one of the ten commandments. She | is a woman who regards being out of the fashion, or | foremost in the fashion, as equally reprehensible, and to | whom dress is among the most important matters of life. | Wherefore she is notorious for a certain grim grandeur of | style, as one who respects herself by her clothes, and is | known among other women as possessing handsome lace | and costly velvet in profusion. Are not lace and velvet | for women of condition? and | what is the grim female but the embodiment of the

| "rigour of the game"

in all matters? Therefore she | clothes herself sumptuously, without elegance or taste, and | would as soon be seen abroad in her dressing-gown and | slippers as without her characteristic heavy velvet mantle or | rustling silk gown. But the artist's little wife, in her fresh | muslin and nice admixture of colours, sails round her for | grace and beauty at about one-twentieth part of what the | grim female's stately ugliness has cost. | One characteristic of the grim female is her want of any of | the womanly passion for children. She may have so much | maternal | | instinct perverted as to be on friendly terms with a dog or | two, a cat, or may be a cockatoo; but she has no real | affection for children, no comprehension of child nature, | and the

"sublime nonsense"

of the nursery is a | thing unknown to her from first to last. If she has children | of her own, she treats them in a hard wooden way that has | nothing of the ideal mother about it. She generally sees | that they are properly cared for, because she is a | disciplinarian; but, though she is inexorable on the score of | cold baths and

"no trash,"

she never condescends | to the weakness of love. If her little ones are sick, they are | set aside and dosed until they are well; if they are naughty, | they are punished; but they never know those moments of | tender indulgence which help them over a period of | indisposition not severe enough for actual doctoring, yet | throwing them out of gear, and inducing a spell of what | ignorance calls naughtiness. Rhadamanthus was a | weakling compared to the grim female in her nursery; and | what she is in her nursery she continues to be in the | schoolroom, and the drawing-room to follow. Her children | are always causes of annoyance to the grim female, and the | first stirrings of individuality, the first half-unconscious | trials of their young strength, are offences she cannot away | with. Children and inferiors they are in her eyes, even | when grown up and married; and she exacts from them the | humility and deference of their lower condition. Hence she | is one to whom the present generation is undeniably worse | than the past one who groans over the follies and | shortcomings of the times, and who thinks that good | conduct died out with her own youth, and that it is not | likely, by the look of things, to be restored. In fact, youth | itself is the root and basis of offence; and if she coerces | children, she tyrannizes over girls and snubs young men, | with a quite impartial hand. | The grim female is not necessarily a strong-minded | woman, or a learned woman, like those who wear | spectacles, go to scientific meetings, and are great in the | classics and the 'ologies. She may be of the emancipated | class; it all depends on chance; and a grim female, when of | the emancipated, is a very formidable person indeed. But | she is not necessarily one of these. On the contrary, part of | her very grimness comes from her intense conservation and | uncompromising conventionality. Nothing is so abhorrent | to her as innovation or novelty in any shape. She does not | hold with anyone out of the | narrowest groove of respectable beliefs, in what direction | soever the diverging line may go. A Romanist or a Baptist, | a Jew or an infidel, it is all one to her; each is equally | dreadful to her, and eternally foredoomed. She is of the | orthodox Church, without fal-lals; as far removed from | Ritualism as she is from ranting, and demanding for herself | that infallibility of judgment and absolute possession of the | truth which she denies to the Pope and all his Cardinals. | Beware how you broach new doctrines in her presence. | She has been known before now to abjure her nearest | relatives for no greater moral lapse than a weak belief in | globules; while as for anything like graver aberrations, say | on the ape theory or on the plurality of races, on historical | religion or on a republican form of government, she has no | toleration whatever. If the Smithfield fires existed at the | present day, the grim female would be the first to light the | faggots. It is all the same if she belongs to any Dissenting | persuasion; part of her grimness coming from her | intolerance, and her own beliefs being simply the | springboard on which she stands. | Many causes produce the grim female. It may be that she | is grim from social pride as well as from natural hardness. | If she has been used to live with people whom, rightly or | wrongly, she considers her inferiors, she will probably | queen it over them in a very unmistakeable manner. The | prelatic blood is renowned for this sort of thing, and a | bishop's daughter, or an archbishop's grand-daughter, or | Mrs. Proudie, prelatic by marriage only, if of the grim | class, is one of the grimmest of her class. The halo of | sanctity round the mitre and crozier will be greater in her | eyes than the glitter of the strawberry leaves, and she holds | herself consecrated by her birth to the understanding of | every moral question, and specially to the final settlement | of every tough theological position. Or she may be grim | because of her isolation and meager intercourse with the | world at large; such as she is found in the remoter districts. | This kind comes into the exceptional or novelist's class, and | is often more masculine than grim. These are the women | who hunt and fish and shoot like men, and who may be | found in all weathers wandering alone about the mountains | in short petticoats and spatterdashes ~~ women who affect | to be essentially mannish in person, habits, and attire, and | who may be quite jolly easy-going fellows in their own | way, or else grim and trenchant, as nature or the fit takes | them. This is a kind not at all uncommon in country places | among the higher class of resident ladies; ladies who are so | highly place locally that they can afford to disregard public | opinion, and who are so independent by disposition that | they naturally go off to the manly side, and make | themselves bad imitations, as the best they can do. | The grim female tries her strength with all new-comers. | She is like one of the giants or black knights of old | romance, who lived in castles or caves, whence they | pounced like tigers on all passers by, and either wrung their | necks if they conquered, or retreated howling if | discomfited. This is what the grim female does in her | degree. She dashes on all who are presented to her, and has | a passage of arms as the first act of the new drama. If her | opponents yield out of timidity or good-breeding, or | perhaps from not understanding the warlike nature of the | encounter, she puts her foot on them forthwith, and | ignominiously crushes them; if they defy her, and give her | back blow for blow, ten to one she cuts them, and becomes | their enemy for ever after. For she has not breadth enough | to be magnanimous, and the one thing she never forgives is | successful opposition. Very grim is she in the presence of | human weakness, moral and physical. Woe to that | unhappy maid of hers who has slipped on the narrow path | of prudence! She will be turned out to perish with no more | compunction than if she were a black-beetle to be swept out | of the way. As a nurse the grim female is precise, punctual, | but inexorable. She would give the patient a fit of nervous | hysterics that would throw him back for a week, rather than | allow him five minutes' grace in the matter of a painful | operation or a nauseous draught. Without variableness or | weakness herself, she cannot endure it in others, and | whosoever comes under her hand must be content to | remain in shape, and to keep well braced up to the utmost | rigidity of duty. If she had to lose an arm or a leg, she | would go to her trouble like a Trojan; and why not others? | She would merely tighten her lips and hold her breath, and | then would sit down to let herself be backed and mangled | without a groan or a word. To judge of her by the notice | given of her in her sister's life, Emily Bronte was of the | grim class, and about the grimmest for her age and state | that could well be found. Had she lived, and lived | unsoftened, she would have been one unbroken mass of | iron and granite, without a soft spot anywhere. Her very | love was fiercer than other women's hate; her strength was | more terrible than a man's anger, and her passions were as | fiery as furnace flames. Of all the examples we could cite, | she seems about the fittest for our model. | A grim female has no mercy. She may be just, but if she is | so, it is in a hard uncompromising way that makes her | justice worse than others' partiality. For justice can be sad, | even if unwavering; and the grim female is never sad, how | painful soever the work on hand and the sentence to be | executed. Neither is she gay; for she is not plastic enough | to be either one or the other. She is run into an iron mould, | where her nature is compressed as in a vice, and she allows | of no expansion, no lipping over, no bursting of bounds | anyhow. What would become of us if all our women were | like her? Without any of the little feminine weaknesses at | which we have our laugh, and yet which we do not wholly | dislike ~~ without any of the pretty coaxing ways which we | know warp our better judgment and take us out of the strict | course; and yet how pleasant that warping process is! ~~ | without any even of the transient petulances which give so | much light and shade to a woman's character, the grim | female stands like an old-world Gorgon, turning living | flesh and blood to stone. When we look at her we are | inclined to forgive all the smallness and silliness which | sometimes vex us in the ordinary woman, and to think that | there are worse things than the love of dress for which we | so often reproach our wives and daughters; that flirting, | which is reprehensible no doubt, might be exchanged for | something even more reprehensible; and that vanity, of the | giggling, coquettish kind, though to be steadily discouraged | and sternly reproved, is not quite the worst feminine thing | after all. Surely not! ~~ a grim female who cannot flirt nor | giggle, nor cry and kiss and make up when scolded is far | away a worse kind of thing than a feather-headed little puss | who manages somehow to pull herself right because of her | loving heart. Weak women vain women, affected women, | and the whole class of silly women, whatever the speciality | of silliness exhibited, are tiresome enough, heaven knows; | but, unsatisfactory as they are, they are better than the grim | female ~~ that woman of no sex, born without softness or | sympathy, and living without pity and without love.