Shrew (archetype)

The shrew – an unpleasant, ill-tempered woman characterised by scolding, nagging, and aggression – is a comedic, in literature and folklore, both Western and Eastern. The best-known work with this theme is probably Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. The figure represents "insubordinate female behavior" in a marital system of polarised gender roles, that is male-dominated in a moral hierarchy.

In 30 cultural groups in the middle 20th century, folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand collected over 400 literary and oral version of shrew stories, in Europe alone. This stereotype or cliché was common in early to mid-20th century films, and retains some present-day currency, often shifted somewhat toward the virtues of the stock female character of the heroic virago.

As a reference to actual women, rather than the stock character, shrew is considered old-fashioned, and the synonym scold (as a noun) is archaic. More modern, figurative labels include and ; more literary alternatives (all deriving from mythological names) are termagant, harpy, and fury. The term shrew is still used to describe the stock character in fiction and folk storytelling. None of these terms are usually applied to males in Modern English.

Shrew derives from Middle English shrewe for 'evil or scolding person', used since at least the 11th century, in turn from Old English scrēawa or scrǣwa, 'shrew' (animal);cognates in other Germanic languages have divergent meanings, including 'fox', 'dwarf', 'old man', and 'devil'. The modern spelling dates to the 14th century. Historically, the animals called shrews were superstitiously feared, falsely believed to have a venomous bite and to behave aggressively and with cruelty, leading to the now-obsolete word beshrew, 'to curse or invoke evil upon'.

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