Shrew (stock character)

The shrew – an unpleasant, ill-tempered woman characterised by scolding, nagging, and aggression[1] – is a comedic, stock character in literature and folklore, both Western and Eastern.

[1] This stereotype or cliché was common in early- to mid-20th-century films, and retains some present-day currency,[2] often shifted somewhat toward the virtues of the stock female character of the heroic virago.

Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand collected over 400 literary and oral versions of shrew stories in 30 cultural groups in Europe in the middle 20th century.

[2] This basic plot structure typically involves a series of recurring motifs:[2] A man, often young and penniless, marries a woman with shrewish or other negative qualities (laziness, etc.

[2] It involves denial of intimacy by the husband to the bride, and often also has several other features, including coercion (e.g., by violence, sleep deprivation, and/or starvation) to induce submission, and psychological manipulation (e.g. animal abuse, usually targeting cats, in front of the wife).

[9] More modern, figurative labels include battle-axe and dragon lady;[10] more literary alternatives (all deriving from mythological names) are termagant, harpy, and fury.

These traits are also reflected in the fact that historically, the animals called shrews were superstitiously feared,[12] leading to the now-obsolete word beshrew, 'to curse or invoke evil upon'.

[13][7] The earliest-known formal definition of shrew as applied to people is Samuel Johnson's, in the 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language: "peevish, malignant, clamorous, spiteful, vexatious, turbulent woman".

He described the use of the word in reference to males as "ancient",[15] but also quoted Shakespeare using it to satirise a man by likening him to the shrewish woman central to his play: "By this reckoning, he is more shrew than she.

This led the gradual shift in meaning,[20] to refer exclusively to an overbearing, turbulent, quarrelsome, even brawling woman,[1] which was a well-established usage by the late 17th century.

[26] Johnson's 18th-century definition was: "A clamourous, rude, mean, low, foul-mouthed woman", suggesting a level of vulgarity and a class distinction from the more generalised shrew, but this nuance has been lost.

[26] In Johnson's time, the word formed part of a legal term, common scold which referred to rude and brawling women see below.