What is meant by a panther woman in PG Wodehouses book Pearls Girls and Monty Bodkin?

Answer 1

I always took this to mean the kind of woman who would throw her weight around, have hysterics at the drop of a hat and generally behave as if she owned the show. In other words a spoilt actress of the type that today would either be in and out of re-hab or shunned by all the studios. (In Wodehouse's day, they were tied by contracts for several years.)

I don't know where the term comes from. It could be an invention by PG.

Answer 2

PG Wodehouse was referring to the 1918 movie, The Panther Woman. It was about a very modern aggressive woman which Wodehouse often portrayed disapprovingly. The film was adapted from a book. The author wrote Patience Sparhawk and Her Times, A Novel (1897), but it proved to be too controversial. It was 1898 and John Lane of The Bodley Head agreed to publish it, but not for two years. William Robertson Nicoll gave a review of it in the April 12, 1897 edition of The Bookman that said it was "crude" in its portrayal of a clever young woman with burning interest in life and identified it as a protest against the tame American novel. In the May 15 issue of The New York Times, the reviewer said that Atherton had "incontestable" ability and a "very original talent" while noting that the book offered a series of "fleshy" episodes in Patience's life that must have scared a sensitive reader. It was banned from the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute, and the San Francisco Call review said it represented Atherton's departure from her proper literary goal of treating early California themes romantically.