On two "grammatical infelicities" noted in a review: is the claim justified?

Question

In her favorable review of Dennis Duncan's "Index, A History of the", Margalit Fox writes "A small slap of my own: In a book as elegantly devoted to literacy as Duncan’s, it would be pleasant if the grammatical infelicities that lightly pepper the text (“no such character presented themselves,” “which anyone in their right mind would want to avoid”) had been buffed away."

I can see this as being a debatable issue of style, but my knowledge of English grammar is not sufficient for me to see what grammatical concerns might be raised by the quoted phrases. Could someone enlighten me?

Answer 1

The first issue:

The lofty and literary use of "grammatical infelicity" (infelicity suggests a lack of appropriateness. It is not necessarily a euphemism for "solecism" - but it raises that possibility in the reader's mind) suggests that the reviewer winces at the incongruity of the singular "character" and the plural "themselves", and might prefer singular-singular agreement of "no such character presented themself".

However, "themselves" accords with the usage given in:

Oxford Lexico

The standard reflexive pronoun form which corresponds to the plural forms they and them is themselves:

I just showed the boys the refrigerator and told them to help themselves.

In current English, they and them are sometimes used in singular contexts, to refer to a person whose gender is unspecified (see also 'He or she' versus 'they'). For example:

If your child is thinking about choosing a school, they can get good advice from this website.

In recent years, people have started to use themself to correspond to this singular use of they and them: it’s seen as the logical singular form of themselves. For example:

This is the first step in helping someone to help themself.
This form is not yet widely accepted, though, so you should avoid using it in formal written contexts. If you were writing the sentence above, you should say:
This is the first step in helping someone to help themselves.

The second issue:

The reviewer refers to infelicities. This may mean two infelicities of the same type or two types of infelicity; it is not clear. Let me assume they are of different types rather than two instances of the above singular-plural mismatch.

The reviewer does not give a complete quotation but it is possible that the second "infelicity" relates to the usage of "which" and "that"

If, for example, the original were
"This is a trap which anyone in their right mind would want to avoid."
it may reasonably be argued that it should be
"This is a trap that anyone in their right mind would want to avoid"
because "that" is a determiner referring to the previously defined "trap".

If, on the other hand, the original were something like
"This is a trap, which anyone in their right mind would want to avoid, set by grammarians." the use of "which" is correct, introducing a clause that could be removed without interfering with the structure of the sentence.

In both cases the reviewer avoids being over-prescriptive, by using the slightly detached and reserved term "grammatical infelicity". In this way they assert their intellectual weight, their finely contrived perception of matters, and their willingness to engage in highbrow debate about trivia.

Answer 2

Perhaps Fox is objecting to the use of plural pronouns as gender-neutral measures (though, as Anton's answer shows, the examples are so vague vague that perhaps Fox's objections are simply with the way they're used). Character is singular, and Fox apparently regards themselves as strictly a plural pronoun; similarly, anyone is, by the strictest standards, singular ("-one"), and their is plural. Fox would presumably prefer constructions like

no such character presented himself

... with an understanding that the masculine pronoun can be regarded as gender neutral, or "him or herself," or a complete rewriting to dodge the issue ("no such character appeared").

It's curious that she speaks with such certainty, and such certainty of being understood and seconded, when these debates have been waged for decades, and largely concluded. The use of plural pronouns as gender-neutral singulars is by now broadly accepted in mainstream academic circles. And in the case of the "anyone" sentence, it's even harder to find solid ground.

1. The assertion that "anyone" must always be strictly understood as singular is tenuous. Yes, it makes logical semantic sense, but its use in plural contexts is so widespread as to push this objection toward the same rubbish heap of pedantry as "don't split infinitives" and "don't end a sentence with a preposition"—a position that can feel good about being "in the right" even if it is steamrolled by human history.
2. But in this case Duncan uses the singular, "[their] right mind," so he clearly means anyone to be singular, right? Well, maybe not. If you said "everywhere I look I see people who have lost their mind," you might defend the singular "mind" as a distributive singular, possessed by everyone. After all, the MLA page just linked, says you can stick to singular "when what is plurally possessed is universal, abstract, or figurative." But such an argument would be far from clear-cut. With controversy on either side, it's intriguing that Fox wants to lock this sentence into one reading.