GRUNDY, MRS., the name of an imaginary English char acter, who typifies the disciplinary control of the conventional "proprieties" of society over conduct, the tyrannical pressure of the opinion of neighbours on the acts of others. The name appears in a play of Thomas Morton, Speed the Plough (1798), in which one of the characters, Dame Ashfield, continually refers to what her neighbour Mrs. Grundy will say as the criterion of respect ability. Mrs. Grundy is not a character in the play, but is a kind of "Mrs. Harris" to Dame Ashfield.