SDMB archives and Google haven’t shed much light, so I’d like to ask the masses if you could explain what “pearl-clutching” means? From context I’m guessing it’s similar to “bluenose” or “puritanical.” Any help with definition and origin would be appreciated. Thanks!
I apologize for not having a definitive answer, but I always just assumed it had to do with the stereotypical image of an uptight, puritanical woman clutching at her pearls when ruffled or morally mortified.
There is an expression or two that refer to one’s virginity as a pearl. This is just another wild guess.
I agree with this answer. It’s the first mental image that came to me when I read the OP.
The expression refers specifically to a pearl necklace, which is seen as the type of ornamentation worn by a woman who is old-fashioned, staid, prissy, conservative, or just plain unfashionable. Think of the frumpy dress of someone like Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character, who doesn’t happen to wear pearls, but does have the unfashionable hairstyle, eyeglasses, and neck-to-ankle drab, shapeless outfit.
Such women are supposedly easily shocked or mortified by “vulgar” displays of lewdness or intimacy and in their anxiety, they might clutch at or fiddle with their pearl necklaces. That’s the image being invoked.
That’s not what’s being referenced.
Well, really!
[Simultaneously clutches pearls and glares through lorgnette]
Do you have a cite for this, or are you going on contextual use?
Hoardes of indignant dowagers are going to descend on ascenray glaring through their lorgnettes and saying "Well, really!. Then ascenray will be beaten about the head with strands of one, three and five pearls.
I am glad I am not ascenray! 
" . . . I vill show the vorld that I can be its mistress. I shall perfect my own rice of pipple—a rice of indignant dowagers vhich vill conquer the vorld!"
To “clutch your pearls” means to be alarmed or suddenly dismayed – to “get excited” as in “Don’t get excited.”
The definition I read for it referenced it as being “from the prima donna’s clutching her pearls when she hits a wrong note.”
This thread was referenced in Slate!
Powers &8^]