Shrew

A shrew or shrew mouse (family Soricidae) is a small mole-like mammal classified in the order Soricomorpha. True shrews are also not to be confused with West Indies shrews, treeshrews, otter shrews, or elephant shrews, which belong to different families or orders.

Although its external appearance is generally that of a long-nosed mouse, a shrew is not a rodent, as mice are. It is in fact a much closer relative of moles, and related to rodents only in that both belong to the Boreoeutheria Magnorder. Shrews have sharp, spike-like teeth, not the familiar gnawing front incisor teeth of rodents.

Shrews are distributed almost worldwide: of the major tropical and temperate land masses, only New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand do not have any native shrews; in South America, shrews are relatively recent immigrants and are present only in the northern Andes. In terms of species diversity, the shrew family is the fourth most successful mammal family, being rivalled only by the muroid rodent families Muridae and Cricetidae and the bat family Vespertilionidae.

Shrew (comics)

Shrew (Marilyn Maycroft) is a fictional character, a mutant in the Marvel Comics Universe. Her first appearance was in X-Factor vol. 1 #80.

Fictional character biography

Shrew formerly worked as one of Hell's Belles, trained by Cyber, and employed by a drug cartel. Tiring of this existence, perhaps after being arrested, she turned in evidence against her old allies in exchange for being given immunity from criminal trial. She was to enter the witness protection program after her testimony, but when her old allies came after her, the US government commissioned X-Factor to protect her.

While Havok, Strong Guy, and Wolfsbane watched over Shrew at the Barclay Hotel in Virginia, Hell's Belles and Cyber came after her. While X-Factor was occupied against her former teammates, Shrew was left to face Tremolo.

X-Factor managed to temporarily drive off Hell's Belles, but Cyber had poisoned Strong Guy and demanded Shrew in exchange for an antidote. The US government's toxicologist provided his own antidote, and X-Factor and the Shrew confronted Cyber and the Belles. X-Factor joined by Multiple Man and Quicksilver overpowered their attackers, and Shrew herself gathered the courage to knock Cyber into the path of an oncoming subway train.

Shrew (stock character)

The shrew – an unpleasant, ill-tempered woman characterised by scolding, nagging, and aggression– is a comedic, stock character 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 supposedly male-dominated in a moral hierarchy.

In 30 cultural groups in the middle 20th century, folklorist Jan Harold Brunvald 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.

Usage and etymology

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 battle-axe and dragon lady; 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.