Mrs Grundy

The so-called 'four-letter words' are printed in full; skirts are even shorter than they were in 1926; sexual behavior, so far as can be judged, is less restricted by taboos and prejudices than at any other time in their history. But are they really in the midst of a permanent revolution in manners?

The author of MRS. GRUNDY thinks not. His book is a detailed and absorbing study of English prudery (which he defines as interference, organized or unorganized, in other people's pleasures) as it has found expression in various fields since the Middle Ages.

First, he discusses verbal taboos and the consequent euphemisms the English language has produced for parts of the body, sexual activity, excretion and certain articles of clothing. This section includes the first generally available account of the 'four-letter words', their derivation, the ways they have been used, and avoided, at various periods, and the hundreds of polite and not-so-polite substitutes have been coined to take their place.

Various forms of the body taboo are analyzed: opposition to the use of man-midwives; the prudery that has always greeted new and revealing fashions; and the widespread opposition to the nudist movement in its pioneering days.

Lastly, there is a section on prudery in relation to various styles of dancing and such erotic displays as the cancan striptease, whose history is traced from 1677 to its recent, police-persecuted vogue.

Peter Fryer. Mrs Grundy: Studies in English Prudery, New York: London House & Maxwell, 1964. Hardcover. 368 pp. 45 black-and-white illus.