Mrs Grundy - Examples

Examples

• John Stuart Mill refers to her in chapter IV of The Subjection of Women.
• P. T. Barnum refers to her in the preface of his non-fiction booklet Art of Money Getting (1880).
• Charles Dickens mentions her in his novel Hard Times.
• William Makepeace Thackeray mentions her in his novel Vanity Fair.
• William Gilbert refers to her in the patter song "At the outset I may mention it's my sovereign intention" from the second act of The Grand Duke.
• Fyodor Dostoyevski refers to her in his novel The Idiot.
• George Gissing wrote a novel which was never published and is now lost called 'Mrs Grundy's Enemies'.
• G. K. Chesterton mentions her in chapter III of Orthodoxy.
• G. K. Chesterton titled a chapter "The Humility of Mrs. Grundy" in his book What's Wrong With the World.
• Lewis Carroll often refers to "Mrs. Grundy" in his personal letters as the characterization of those who may disapprove of his friendships with children.
• James Joyce refers to her in the "Eumaeus" chapter of Ulysses. Gifford's Ulysses Annotated characterizes her as "the ultimate arbiter of stuffy middle-class propriety."
• Robert A. Heinlein also mentions her, for example, in his novels The Number of the Beast, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Stranger in a Strange Land, and in the second intermission of Time Enough for Love.
• Philip José Farmer's characters in the Riverworld series also refer to Mrs Grundy as prudishness incarnate in a negative way.
• Peter Fryer's book Mrs Grundy: Studies in English Prudery concerns prudish behaviour, such as the use of euphemisms for underwear.
• Jack London uses Mrs Grundy in his book The People of the Abyss to describe the early twentieth century attitude of the English working class towards drunkenness: Mrs. Grundy rules as supremely over the workers as she does over the bourgeoisie; but in the case of the workers, the one thing she does not frown upon is the public house ... Mrs. Grundy drew the line at spirits".
• Louisa May Alcott alludes to Mrs Grundy in her book Little Women when speaking of the changes Laurie undergoes as a result of Amy's admonitions to him (1868).
• Martin Seymour-Smith refers to Mrs Grundy throughout his biography of Thomas Hardy.
• Thomas Hardy disparages the 'Grundyist' in his essay "Candour in English Fiction" (1890).
• Mrs Grundy was satirized in the advice book for teens, Mrs Grundy is Dead (New York: Century, 1930).
• Walter Lippmann dismisses the "exploded pretensions of Mr. and Mrs. Grundy" in his A Preface to Politics (1913).
• On the television show Absolutely Fabulous, a character Saffie is called a Mrs. Grundy by Patsy.
• A long-time character in Archie Comics is the teacher Miss Grundy. When first introduced, she fit the Mrs. Grundy archetype well, being judgmental and old-fashioned. However, the character has been softened considerably over the years, and her current incarnation is not particularly Grundyesque.
• P G Wodehouse's lyrics to the song "Till the Clouds Roll By" from the musical Oh Boy! contain the line "What would Mrs. Grundy say" in Verse 1.
• H. G. Wells's character Ewart in the novel Tono-Bungay, during a long dialogue about the Grundys says, "There's no Mrs. Grundy." (book 1 chapter 4, section iii)
• Vladimir Nabokov refers to Mrs. Grundy in his novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941).
• Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy refer to "Mrs. Grundy" in Chapter 12 of The Ethical Slut 2nd Edition (2009).
• Harry Turtledove refer to "Mrs.Grundy" in Chapter 3 of Colonization : Down to Earth