Mrs Grundy

Mrs Grundy originated as an unseen character in Thomas Morton's 1798 five-act comedy Speed the Plough.

With the Victorian era, its new morality of decency, domesticity, serious-mindedness, propriety and community discipline on the one hand, its humbug, hypocrisy and self-deception on the other,[3] Mrs Grundy swiftly rose to a position of censorious authority.

[6] Butler in his 1872 Erewhon noted of Ydgrun that "she was held to be both omnipresent and omnipotent; but she was not an elevated conception, and was sometimes both cruel and absurd".

[7] His own preference was for the small group he called High Ydgrunites, who broadly accepted the low-norm conventions of the goddess, but were capable of rising above Mrs Grundy and her claims, if need be.

While not strictly onomatopoeia, the name 'Grundy' nevertheless has sound associations with underlying mental dissatisfaction as evidenced linguistically in words such as 'grumble', 'mumble', 'grunt', and 'gruntled'.