The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1869-02-05
The Grim Female.


The Grim Female.
The grim female must be carefully dis
tinguished from the masculine woman, for
they are by no means essen TALLY 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 fulfll--is
that Of serving as warning to the young as
to what to avoid. The grim female is not
necessarily an old maid, as would appear
ditions Indifferent ly-as maid, wife, widow,
as mother and childless alike-and we do
not find that her condition in any way af-
fects her character. If she is born grim,
she remains grim to the end; and neither
marriage nor motherhood modiies her. The
grim female of novelists is generally an old
maid; but caricature printed in the broad
est lines and from the outsides of things.
Sheis emphatically au odd woman; odd in
her dress, her mode, her state. She wears
tapping cap, skimpy skirts, and rusty
brown uittens on her bony hands; she has
O passionate aversion to men and matri-
mony; and she lives queenly behind o bar
ricaded house door, with q 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 un
fashionable, and unlike everybody else and
could never be mistaken for an ordinary
woman from the first moment when she ap-
pears on the page to the last paragraph of
her existence.
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 dog, or two, or o cat, or may be
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
ing of the ideal mother about it. 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 con-
duct 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 snobs
yonng men with quite impartial hand.
The grim female is not necessarily q
like those who wear spectacles, go to scien-
tiic meetings, and are great in the classics
and the 'ologies. She may be of the eman-
cipated class; it all depends on chance; and
grim female, when of the emancipated, is
a very formidable person indeed; but she is
not necessarily one Of these. On the con-
trary, part of her very grimness comes from
her intense conservatism and uncompromis-
ing conventionality. Nothing is so abhor-
rent to her as innovation or novelty in any
shape. She does not hold with any one out
of the narrowest groove of respectable be-
liefs, in what direction soever the diverging
line may go. A Romanist or a Baptist,
Jew or an infidel, it is all one to her; each
is equally dreadful to her, and eternally
foredoomed.
She is the Orthodox Church, without fall
lals; as far removed from Ritualsm as she
is from ranting and demanding for herself
that infalhbility of judgment and absolute
possession of the truth which she denies to
the Pope and oil his Cardinals Beware
how you broach new doctrines in her pre-
sence. She has been known before now to
abinre her nearest relatives for no greater
moral lapse than a weak belief in globnles;
while for anything like graver alterations
say on the ape theory, or Oh the plurality