Mrs Grundy

From Home Notes, 1st June 1918.

JUST GRUNDY!

A new point of view on a very old subject.

I’ve often wondered why it is that we've always been brought up to believe that Mrs. Grundy is a Mrs.  I’m not at all certain that the person in question isn't a Mr!

I went out to dinner with my on-leave brother the other night, and when I produced my cigarette case at the end of the meal he was horrified.  Yes, in 1918!  He actually went on to say that he didn't care to see women smoking in public, especially when the woman in question was his own sister.  And he looked at my short hair and said for the eighty-ninth time that day that he couldn't imagine why modern girls wanted to copy men! 

I told him also for the eighty-ninth time that they didn't; that they simply smoked be'cause they liked it, and cut their hair and wore breeches for comfort’s sake; but he wasn't in the least convinced and never will be, I'm sure.  And then they try to make you believe that Mrs. Grundy is a woman.

I remember two years ago, when I first broached the subject of going on the land.  It took me about five minutes to convince mother that it was the thing for me to do; but it took me about a month to make dad even begin to consider the question seriously.  And he's not in the least a stern parent; it's simply that he holds the usual masculine and Grundy-ish view on what any female relation of his may or may not do.

I've just remembered Aunt Julia's face when she first saw me in my farm kit, though, and I must say that, after all, the Grundys aren't always Misters. Perhaps it would be better to say that it's a case of six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.  But anyway, let's be honest about it and not put all the blame on one side. Let’s allude to the person in question as just "Grundy" in future, then I think we shall be a great deal nearer the truth—don’t you? 

["Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person, a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety... . she began life as a minor character in Thomas Morton's play Speed the Plough (1798) " (Wikipedia). ]