Can you explain the term 'flat felony'?

It’s not a description of her attitude or demeanor. The line your referring to is “short of flat felony, she enjoys complete license except for amiable weaknesses of any sort.” Because her reputation for moral rectitude comes from her stern disagreeableness and self-denial, the only things that can undermine it are a straight up crime (i.e., a “flat felony”) or a minor indulgence (i.e., one of those “amiable weaknesses”). It’s a way of highlighting the strangeness and hypocrisy inherent to the morality of the setting.

@JeSuisRickSpringfield Doesn’t “short of flat felony, she enjoys complete license” mean essentially “she does whatever she wants, short of outright serious crimes”?

If that is the full sentence written above by the other jellies, I would interpret it as she does whatever she wants, even breaking some minor laws, or maybe it’s a morality law, especially if it is set many years ago. I think she wouldn’t do anything that hurt others, and wouldn’t do something that could put her in jail or would be so egregious that even she couldn’t fathom it. I brought in morality, because of how it is written it sounds from the past, and it is about a woman.

I don’t know the play, just guessing. Maybe @Jeruba or @janbb would be familiar with it.

@Zaku Yes, that is what that part of the phrase means. But it continues with “except for amiable weaknesses of any sort” because that is the other thing that could get her in trouble. Shaw is critiquing Puritan morality, which he characterizes as overly focused on the extremes of the moral spectrum (major crimes and minor indulgences).

@JLeslie She does plenty that hurts others in the play. The point is that she’s a terrible person with a good reputation because she avoids major crimes and minor indulgences.

If it helps anyone, here’s the full opening paragraph:

At the most wretched hour between a black night and a wintry morning in the year 1777, Mrs. Dudgeon, of New Hampshire, is sitting up in the kitchen and general dwelling room of her farm house on the outskirts of the town of Websterbridge. She is not a prepossessing woman. No woman looks her best after sitting up all night; and Mrs. Dudgeon’s face, even at its best, is grimly trenched by the channels into which the barren forms and observances of a dead Puritanism can pen a bitter temper and a fierce pride. She is an elderly matron who has worked hard and got nothing by it except dominion and detestation in her sordid home, and an unquestioned reputation for piety and respectability among her neighbors, to whom drink and debauchery are still so much more tempting than religion and rectitude, that they conceive goodness simply as self-denial. This conception is easily extended to others—denial, and finally generalized as covering anything disagreeable. So Mrs. Dudgeon, being exceedingly disagreeable, is held to be exceedingly good. Short of flat felony, she enjoys complete license except for amiable weaknesses of any sort, and is consequently, without knowing it, the most licentious woman in the parish on the strength of never having broken the seventh commandment or missed a Sunday at the Presbyterian church.

According to Uncle AI:

“In the context of criminal law, a “flat felony” is a slang term, often used in legal and media circles, to generally refer to a felony that is not classified as a particularly serious or high-level offense.”

And it is not a particularly British term; Auntie Google has a number of other citations.

@JeSuisRickSpringfield Thanks.

@janbb That’s not the way this author is using the words “flat felony”, though.

^^ Yes, it is if you read RickSpringfield’s explanation. It means she doesn’t commit actual minor crimes. I don’t have a dog in this fight but I think the definition works.

@janbb I don’t have a dog either, but I think it’s the meaning of “flat” as in “clear”, such as “a flat lie”, as opposed to a borderline (not entirely clear) felony. As in, the character does what she wants, including things that you might wonder might be a crime. She only avoids doing things that are clearly a crime. I.e. it’s not specifying felonies that aren’t severe felonies, which is what the AI’s suggested term says it’s about.

@Zaku Got it. I think we would have to look at some Shavian criticism to see what was meant then.