The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-01-05
GRIN FEMALES.


body the idea of race of grim females.
Whether as fabulous aud complex monsters,
like the Sphinx and the Harpies, or in the
more human forms of the Fates and the Fu-
ries, unsexed women have been universally
recognized as forming part of the system ot
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, exaggera-
tions, they are so far interesting to the an
thropoogist; but, as women with definite du-
ties and fixed functions, nothing can be less
admirable. They are even worse than eifsmi
nate 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 iulhl
is that of serving as warning to the young
rs 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 condi-
tions indifferently-as maid widow, as mother
and childless alike and we do not fad
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 modifes her. The grim female of
novelists is generally an old mad; but Carl
oature, painted in the broadest lines, and
from the outside of things. She is emphati-
cally on odd woman; odd in her dress, her
mode, her state. She wears Tapping cap,
skinny skirts, and rusty brown mittens on
her bOny hands; she has passionate aver
sion TO men and matrimony; and she lives
queerly behind barricaded house door, with
q small slavey, or an elderly female afflicted
with deafness, to do her work and bear the
brunt Of her temper. Bot she is always odd,
and unmarried, and unlike everybody else,
and could never be mistaken for an ordinary
woman from the first moment when she ap-
peared 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; in fact she generally is one of the most
conventional OF her sex; she Is one who rules
her household with rod OF iron, carefully
wrought after the pattern of her neighbors'
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 breach of one
OF the ten commandments. She is a woman
who regards being out of the fashion, or fore
most in the fashion, as equally reprehensible,
and to whom dress is among the most import
ant matters of life. Wherefore, she is noto-
rious for certain grim grandeur Of style, as
one who respects herself by her clothes, and
ls known among women as possessing hand
some lace and costly velvet in profusion. Are
not lace and velvet de rigueur for women of
condition and what is the grim female but
the embodiment of 'rigOr 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 character
istic heavy velvet mantle or rustling silk
gown. But the artists little wife, in her
fresh muslin and nice admixture of colors, sails
round her for grace and beauty at about one
twentieth part of what the grim females
stately ugliness has cost.
One characteristic of the grim female is her
want of any of the womanly passion for chill
dren. She may have 80 much maternal
instinct perverted as to be on friendly terms
with adog or two, cat or may be cockatoo;
but she has no real affection for children, no
comprehension Of child nature, and the Sub
lime nonsense" of the nursery is thing un-
known to her from first to last. If she has
children of her own, she treats them in hard
wooden way that has nothing of the ideal
mother about it. She generally sees that thsy
are properly cared for, because she is a disc-
plinarian; but, though she is inexorable on
the score of cold baths and 'no trash" she
never condescends to the weakness of love.
Ii 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
period of indisposition not severe
enough for actual doctoring, yet throwing
them out of gear, and inducing spell of what
ignorance calls naughtiness. Rhadamanthus
was weakling compared to the grim female
in her nursery; and what she is in her nursery
she continues to be in the school room, and
the drawing-room to follow. Her children are
always causes of annoyance to the grim
female, and the first STRINGS Of individuality,
the first halfunconscious trials of their young
strength, are offenses she cannot away with.
Children and interiors they are in her eyes,
even when grown up and married; and she
exacts from them the humility and Difference
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 effense and II
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, or go to scientific
meetings, and are great in the classics and the
'ologies. She may be of the emancipated
class; il all depends on chance; and grim
female, when OF the emancipated, is a very
IL IIz- til D. q