“She’s hot, she knows it, and she’ll leave you smoldering.”
Smoky, slow-building, sultry heat.
But we’ll come to that, and why the ‘fury’ of ‘hell hath no fury’ is often misunderstood – or at best, only half-understood.
The meaning of the phrase is at once easily understood and all-too-easily misunderstood. In common usage, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ means that nothing in the world – or even beyond the world, such as in the depths of hell – is as furious and capable of great anger as a woman who has been ‘scorned’.
‘Scorned’ here means ‘slighted’, ‘ridiculed’, ‘spurned’, or shown contempt or disdain. A woman who has been treated in such a scornful manner is capable of such anger that even hell, the fiery seat of evil, cannot match it for its destructive power.
But there’s another word whose meaning we need to consider. What does ‘fury’ mean in ‘Hell hath no fury’?
In the context of the phrase, ‘fury’ carries another meaning in addition to the usual definition (wild or violent anger). Because there’s possibly also a mythological meaning, or allusion, intended.
The Furies, or Erinyes (pronounced ‘i-rin-i-eez’, with the stress on the second syllable), were female deities in ancient Greek mythology. They were ‘chthonic’, meaning that they were associated with the Underworld, or Hades. They are sometimes known as the Eumenides, a term most familiar to us because it is the name given to the third and final play in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, his trilogy of tragic plays about Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and their children.
In the Iliad, his great epic poem about the final days of the Trojan War, Homer tells us that the Erinyes dwelt ‘under earth’ and took vengeance on men, especially men who had sworn a false oath.
So, because the Furies were both female and associated with the pagan underworld (or ‘hell’, if you will), it’s likely that when the phrase ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ was first used, ‘fury’ was intended to refer to the Furies, rather than simply a bout of uncontrollable rage.
Or, to put the phrase in slightly different words, ‘there is not a Fury, or member of the Erinyes, in Hell or the Underworld who is more formidable than a mortal woman who has been slighted (usually by a man).’
We’re still figuring out what labelling will look like, with a few ideas in mind and Image generation at our fingertips, NEW Release – SCORN, will be coming out very soon. The taste is sharp and of course quite hot with fermented Carolina Reapers, Ghost peppers, Red Jalapenos, and bird’s eye chilis.
Hell Hath no fury like a woman’s SCORN. EW Release – SCORN – Pure heat and Flavour and Meant for the Masochist in those who dare.
