John Gross (1) (1935–2011)

It’s sad to find misogyny still alive and well and popping up like weeds. Editor John Gross had only 6 pages to devote to Nathaniel Hawthorne in this anthology, and he chose to give a full page to an excerpt entitled “Englishwomen” from Our Old Home. The opening sentence of the excerpt contains the phrase “ it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that we western people class under the name of woman” (402). So Englishwomen over fifty can’t even be classed with women, they are instead “creatures”?

Hawthorne continues describing the archetypal 50+ English lady as “massive with solid beef and streaky tallow,” which causes him to think of “steaks and sirloins” (402). She is “elephantine,” “usually grim and stern,” with a “sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe.” Not content with expressing contempt for middle-aged Englishwomen’s bodies, Hawthorne then proceeds to state that these women are strong only physically, but morally are weak, “powerless and timid” in anything that calls for moral or ethical fortitude outside of her homegrown “conventionalities” (402-3). Hawthorne wraps up his dissection by stating that “somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl,” and laments that, alas, the girl must grown up into the overpowering creature of a middle-aged Englishwoman (403).

I assume that John Gross found this piece irresistibly amusing, and did not consider that women readers of this anthology could find it offensive and misogynist, especially read as an excerpt without any context in which to mitigate or explain the virulent disgust displayed towards older women. I hope that Gross hesitated before including rants against racial and religious minorities, but I admit that I’m not going to continue reading this anthology, which a (male reviewer) on the back cover touts as sure to give everyone “hundreds of unexpected pleasures and rediscoveries.” It certainly did contain one unexpected discovery for me.… (altro)