There’s a lot of fury involved with Hell. Indeed, if you pay a visit to Hell it’s apparently all boiling hot – demons leap about cackling insanely and you’ll also hear the high-pitched wails of the eternally damned. You can equate this to a trip to your local McDonald’s, in other words (ba dum tss)!

William Congreve invented the saying in his play the Mourning Bride, written in the 18th century. It’s stuck around since then, although we can’t exactly claim this is due to its veracity. What it means is as follows – even the lunacy of Hell can’t meet the horrifyingly violent standards of a woman’s scones.

Gender stereotyping isn’t out thing, but it’s bloody typical a woman would take to the kitchen to wreak havoc! Or is this saying merely misogynistic verbiage? Let’s take a look.

Hell vs Scones

“Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scones” – quite the odd saying, right? We’re supposed to find profundity and terror within this absurd piece of reasoning, but we only find scones and (as aforementioned) absurdity. The former are very tasty, especially when covered in cream, strawberry jam, and honey. Not exactly the definition of Hell we’d conjure up.

Apparently, though, Beelzebub himself would only be able to quake and whimper in terror before a woman’s scones. Was Mr. Congreve married to the world’s worst cook, or something? What did his wife put in his bloody scones!? Semtex? The trapped souls of a million black plague victims? Or was Mr. Congreve a fusspot who considered even a minor flaw in his precious scones some sort of travesty of justice?

We’ve not met Mr. Congreve and we’re not likely to either, seeing as he’s still dead, so we can only hazard a guess. We do know society was rather sexist in olden times, so Mrs. Congreve was likely stuck in the kitchen whilst her husband put quill to paper.

Evidently, the only form of creativity the poor woman could indulge in was making her scones as the devil incarnate. This is quite some achievement, although as the saying has stuck around this hints at an underlying belligerence in women which is quite terrifying to behold.

Angry Women – A Modern Explanation

Why are women so angry they’d imbue lovely scones with a menace which exceeds the ferocity of Hell? Thinking about this logically, it’s not as if men are less violent. However, at least men have the moral sensibility and good grace to just punch someone drunkenly in the face, rather than spoil a lovely set of scones with a catastrophic ire.

Thanks to women’s liberation, we should point out there’s now little need for anyone (be it man, woman, or donkey) to create a demonic batch of scones.

These fluffy, delicate things are to be enjoyed and cultivated with a sense of magnificence, not with the deranged outlook of someone Hell-bent upon being the harbinger of doom. Please keep this in mind for any future baking sessions, women. And men… just stop stinking so much, please.