'An Afflictive Disease'

I was surprised to learn that when it entered the language some eight-hundred years ago, the noun scold referred, by definition, to a woman. I was also surprised to learn its original object was a foul-mouthed woman. The OED tersely traces the evolution: “In early use, a person (esp. a woman) of ribald speech; later, a woman (rarely a man) addicted to abusive language.” By the time Shakespeare wrote The Taming of the Shrew, the meaning was already blurring. Petruchio says: “I know she is an irksome brawling scold.” For the intransitive verb form the Dictionary gives: “to use undignified vehemence or persistence in reproof or fault-finding; colloquially often merely, to utter continuous reproof.”

Encountering scold as a noun brings to mind The Good Influence, one of nine illustrations Grant Wood made in 1936 for a Limited Editions Club reprint of Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street (1920). The drawing depicts Mrs. Bogart, described by Guy Davenport as a “moralist, prude, and bully.” His essay, “Grant Wood’s The Good Influence,” is included in The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature and Art (1996). Davenport gives a scholarly account of the influences on Wood’s drawing and writes:

“Once we have the iconographic information that this all too typical Midwestern American woman is a specific character in a satirical novel (she is a widow and has spoiled her son, who is a lout), we see her for what she is: a gossip, a hypocrite, a self-righteous critic of other people.”

The most precious of American rights is the right to be left alone. Who needs some nagging Mrs. Bogart critiquing his behavior, thoughts and speech? I confess to formerly thinking of scolds as people of Mrs. Bogart’s general age and appearance – school-marmish and disapproving are the adjectives that come to mind. Yet most of the scolds I see on the news are young people – already moralists, prudes and bullies, to use Davenport’s words. Busybodyism, of course, is no respecter of age, sex, race, religion or ethnicity. It’s an equal-opportunity pain in the ass. Marianne Moore puts it like this in her poem “Snakes, Mongooses.Snake-Charmers, and the Like,” first published less than two years after Main Street:

“The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.

Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best.”