The Shaming Of The Shrew

How did the character of this inoffensive little creature of meadow and garden become cruelly impugned, wonders Ian Morton

The Oxford English Dictionary gives two definitions: ‘1. A small insectivorous mammal resembling a mouse with a long pointed snout and tiny eyes; 2. A bad-tempered or aggressively assertive woman.’ The two are difficult to equate, so why the villification of a small mammal so timorous that the shock of being picked up—or even thunder—may kill it?

Shakespeare established for posterity the shrew as a woman of difficult disposition, but he was only reiterating a long-held tradition that condemned the animal as venomous and equated it with a tempestuous female. Folklorist Prof Jan harold Brunvand has traced more than 400 versions of a shrewish woman tamed in male-dominated societies in which females must be compelled into compliance.

The denigration of the shrew itself as a nasty little creature dates from Ancient Greece, when Aristotle recorded that it was considered venomous. Roman writer Pliny offered no fewer than 18 cures for its bite, the most dramatic being to tear the shrew open and hold its carcass on the wound. In the 2nd century, Roman scribe Aelian noted the belief that mere contact with a shrew would render horses and cattle lame and that ‘every beast of burden dreads the shrew-mouse’. Conversely, the Ancient egyptians revered the creature and accorded it a ritual burial.