Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1884 — The Disappearance of “the Scold.” [ARTICLE]

The Disappearance of “the Scold.”

Nothing was more common in the Sixteenth century than a “scolding woman,” and the scolding woman had not disappeared in this country till after the Declaration of Independence some even survived that. The evidence of this does not rest upon tradition. Laws had to be framed with severe penalties to protect men from the “common scold”; and these penalties were often inflicted, one of the most effective of them being the “duckingchair,” which in many cases was the only one that could check the wagging of a virulent tongue. Nothing is commoner in the ballad literature of the sixteenth century than the complaints of the railing ot the scold and the shrew, and the devices for taming them were as ingenious as they were brutal. Either the literature of the time is an awful libel, of scolding women were so numerous as to be a great feature of the age; scolding was as prominent as begging, and the scolding wife as common as the tipsy husband. The philosopher wants to know whether it is the temper of women which has changed, since it is a fact that the “common scold” has practically disappeared from modern life (there used to be women whom even the sheriff was afraid of), is no more apiece de resistance of literature, and has not to be legislated against, or whether the apparent difference is only a change in man’s attitude toward the sex. Some students of sociology think that man’s submission has wrought the transformation, and that women appear to be more sweet and amiable now they have their way unruffled. It is a very delicate question, and one that would not be raised here except in the interest of science. For the disappearance of traits in human nature is as useful a study as the elimination of useless members or the development of new organs in our evolution. Nobody except the sciologist can say what the disappearance of the “common scold” has to do with man’s position in the modern recreations of society; the business of this department is to collect facts, not to co-ordinate them.— Charles Dudley Wal’ner, in Harper’s Magazine.