The use of Mrs.

[muck_a_luck]

Miss Manners is my heroine.

Yes, it's true. Though I am not really a stickler for a lot of formalities in life, I used to read her column regularly, loved her novel of manners, Gilbert, and have Miss Manner's Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior right next to me every day at work. You know. In case something comes up.

Did you know the correct utinsel for eating ice cream is a wide tined fork?

Anyway, the real reason the book is at work is because Cellmate and I have a running debate about the use of Ms. and Mrs.

I default to Ms. except when I know the woman prefers Mrs., or when I am sending something to a married couple together.

Cellmate feels that soooo many people are insulted by the use of Ms. if they are married women, that it is very important to establish whether the woman is married, and then defaults to the use of Mrs., unless she knows the woman prefers Ms.

I dislike this behavior in the extreme, because Cellmate refuses to use Mrs. correctly, when she uses it.

Yesterday, we entered the debate again over whether to use Mrs. in addressing a client we knew to be divorced. I reacted on an emotional level, saying, "I think I would vomit…" Cellmate responded that "almost every" divorced woman she knows still uses Mrs.

So, I turned to my dear Miss Manners for her thoughts.

For anyone who cares, here is what Miss Manners has to say on the subject of how to "correctly" address a woman. (I put this here less as an argument in the LJ venue for the use of Ms., which I suspect most of us prefer, but rather as a reminder of the complexities of the use of the title Mrs. I hate when people tell me how to "correctly" address someone, but they don't have a clue what they are talking about. They just want to try to make me stop using Ms. *glares pointedly at Cellmate over my monitor*)



The Ms. Mystery
(from Miss Manner's Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, by Judith Martin, pp. 74-75)

…The correct sequence is:

From birth, Daffodil Louise Perfect is styled "Miss," although her brother Cutlip, is called "Master" rather than "Mr." until he is big enough to knock down anyone who tries it. However, the older sister of Miss Daffodil Louise Perfect is not addressed as Miss Viola Brentwood Perfect, but, because she is the ranking daughter, only as Miss Perfect.

When Daffodil marries Jonathan Rhinehart Awful, 3d (after breaking the engagement several times and drving everyone crazy, especially the lady at the department store bridal registry), she becomes Mrs. Jonathan Rhinehart Awful, 3d. When she then opens a yarn and Pakistani leathergoods boutique, there is no right way at all that she can be addressed in business correspondence. "Mrs. Daffodil Awful" would be incorrect and "Mrs. Jonathan Awful" would be inappropriate. After Daffy and Rhino are divorced, she correctly combines her maiden surname with her ex-husband's, thus becoming Mrs. Perfect Awful. The strict old rule was that a divorced woman could continue to use her husband's full name if she was the innocent party in the divorce, but this no longer applies, as nobody is innocent anymore.

Had Daffy murdered Rhino instead, which che considered in order to simplify the property settlement, she would have remaind Mrs. Jonathan Rhinehart Awful, 3d. The name of an undivorced woman is the same whether her husband is dead or alive, however much the old friends of broken-hearted widows enjoy taunting them by insisting that they caonnt continue to use their husband's name as they did before bereavement.

Now do you feel a little more kindly inclined toward the use of "Ms."? Daffodil can correctly be styled Ms. from birth to death, without anyone's having to ask her where Rhino is (if you find out, several tradesmen would like to know) before knowing the correct form. Does "Ms." still seem so odd and difficult?

One note of caution. Women who prefer the old forms should not be bullied into giving them up. In this period of transition, it is courteous to address people in the fashion with which they feel comfortable…

PLEASE TO BE NOTING!!!!! It is NEVER correct to be Mrs. Daffodil Awful. That is actually the thing that bugs me the MOST about these people who frown on the use of Ms. as inproper or inferior. They want to be Mrs. but they want to use their own name. AND they want to say that is somehow more "correct" in terms of etiquette than just calling them Ms. While completely agreeing with Miss Manners about the importance of addressing people in the way they are comfortable being addressed, if we are having an etiquette argument then we cannot ignore the rules of etiquette. I'll call people whatever they would like to be called. But if Cellmate wants to "correctly" address her envelopes to her divorced female clients, she can't pretend that it's just "correct" to call the person Mrs. Herfirstname HerExsLastName. *huffs*

I'm sorry? Was that random? You have seen my rant about people who name children after themselves and 60 year old men still going by III, right?

Comments

[charlietudor.livejournal.com]

I'll call people whatever they would like to be called.

THANK YOU. That's my default policy, and otherwise, it's Ms or Mr, periodendofdiscussion. Someone's marital status is NOT their entire identity. EVER. *sniffs*

'Sides, I've been divorced, and if I'd gotten stuff from *my* lawyer *consistently* addressed to Mrs Asshole'sName, I'd've gotten me a new lawyer. *nods formly*

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I don't get Cellmate's friends. Though she does come from a different social layer from me, too. I suppose it is possible that divorced rich folks value their former Mrs. status more than I would. Maybe. I dunno.

However, Cellmate seems to think they cling to Mrs. because of their generation. (She's 50.) Implying, again, that they somehow think it is more proper or better to retain the use of Mrs. But you KNOW they are not going by Mrs. Her Exs Fullname. I dunno. Again, if we are phrasing this as an etiquette question, the etiquette is screwed.

NOW. If we are phrasing this as an anti-womens-lib question, THEN the visceral aversion to using Ms. may make more sense. Except that I bet a lot of money that these women, like Cellmate, agree with just about everything that the women's movement stands for about equality and feminine independence. They're divorced and not remarried, fercryin'outloud!

I dunno. The more you meet people, the more they are weird.

I'd've gotten me a new lawyer.

Personally, I'm with you on that. Please refer back to my "I would vomit" comment...

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this!!! I imagine that the majority of women who would still want to use Mrs. would be in the over-70 age bracket. But that's why it's good to ask, and why forms have those "check one" boxes before the name line.

I hadn't known that about Miss for the eldest daughter. And I am the eldest daughter! Ah, well, I use Ms., and never did change my name back when I was married.

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

Yup! Whenver that point about Miss comes up, Husband likes to talk about the Romans. He's not 100% sure, but I think the eldest daughter got some name related to her father's name, then her sisters just got the equivalent of that same name plus jr., III, IV, etc.

Of course, I become annoyed far more often than anyone would probably guess thinking about how female familial names are totally subsumed under male names. Your mother's name is only her father's name, so going back a generation doesn't help. Personally, my radical solution would be to make a clean break, choose my own name, and name my daughter that, and start a family tradition of her naming her daughters that and them naming their daughters that down the line, just as AG33 will name his sons his father's name, and so on.

It would be a rocking cultural change, in my opinion. Women could get that solution doesn't capture their paternal women, but those women are already lost anyway. There's no good way to deal with the name game simply through individual's names.

Oooo! Family tree tatoos could be awesome.

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Wow, your brain is FUN this morning! :D

African Americans have had to deal with this issue -- Malcom X, etc. It's an interesting one.

I know two married couples in which the husband took the wife's last name instead, one where both the husband and wife picked a new name together for themselves as a couple, one where the wife changed her name, but not to her husbands last name.

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

Heheh. I like the reference to when people have to stop calling a young man "Master." :D

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Me, too! I could have gone for that to make people stop calling me Miss. ;-)

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

*snickers*

I've always had this argument with people, because Mum uses her own name (I refuse to say "maiden" name, since we all know to have had me, she's not) and still gets "Mrs. [herfirstname] [hislastname]" all the time. Plus, she's a physician and he's got a PhD, and I can't tell you the number of times we've gotten stuff addressed to "Dr. and Mrs. [his name]". Da was the one who told her to keep her own name ("You went through all that work to get the degree, your name should be the one on it."), so he gets even pissier about it that I do.

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

Also! (Totally forgot.)

Here's another one for you to look up: constant argument I have with a male coworker. He calls every female individual who comes into the store "miss"; I stick with "ma'am", whether it's an eight-year-old or an eighty-year-old. He says women don't want to be seen as old. I say it's insulting and demeaning. Thoughts?

(In case it matters, we're both in our early 20s, and he has a number of affected behaviors--calling women "angel"--that would get him smacked if not for the counter between him and his victims.)

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm... Now I feel the need to reread my Guide to see if she comments on this.

Personally, I would go with "ma'am" but I come from a culture where that's a more neutral term. But I have met people who get insulted by it because it makes them feel old or it's too formal or whatever. But saying "Miss" to a woman who is clearly over 40 just patronizing, and I suspect 90% of his customers would hear it that way. Of course, he thinks calling women he doesn't know "angel" is charming, so he's probably a lost cause, unless he's, like, underwear model handsome and really plays the smarm well. Which I'm guessing NOT!!!! :D

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

Which I'm guessing NOT!!!! :D

You would guess correctly.

I don't understand him at all. He was raised in the same region as me, and yet he's got all these affectations that he picked up from God only knows where: telling people to "have a blessed day" even though he's not at all religious or spiritual (yes, I asked); "honey" and "angel" and the like even though he's about 40 years too young to be able to get away with it. I dunno.

[emeraldsword.livejournal.com]

Just to weigh in here - insulting and demeaning. My marital status is not his business, and I also don't want random flattery. Obviously, I'd rather people weren't insulting, but people defaulting me to Miss really winds me up and I make sure to specify 'Ms' before anything else.

Incidentally, when I went into the bank to say that I wanted to be Ms not Miss, they said I'd have to prove it! I was all '????' and she explained that only divorced women use Ms. I said it was a choice and I was going to be 'Ms' please. She checked with her superior and it was OK to change me... she didn't manage it though, only changed the name on the card, not on the account. I will have to go back and try again.

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

Miss Manners has plenty to say about your mom's situation. If you're interested in her commentary I can relay. :) It's funny, but the irritation that your mom's going through is specifically why I chose NOT to keep my birth name. I figured all AG33's teachers and friends would call me by Husband's name, why give myself the high blood pressure? My friend here at work gave me perspective. She kept her own name. Everybody screwed it up anyway. She said, eh, she didn't care what they called her, she was who she was and the rest wasn't that important. Which is a great way to look at it and if I had been 15 years older and wiser when I made the decision, I might have kept my birth name. There you go.

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

That's kind of how views it. Dad and I get more exercised about it. (And now that they're theoretically splitting up, it's moot, yeah?)

[alpha-strike.livejournal.com]

Age is a factor; women my mother's age almost invariably prefer "Mrs. Bob Babyboomer" to "Ms. Anything". Women my age are kind of a crap-shoot (I'm a touch older than you) and women younger than me tend more toward "Ms. Mary Myname". I avoid the issue by pronouncing "Mrs", Miss and "Ms" all as "Miz" and passing it off as a local drawl. If anyone bothers to correct me -- it occasionally happens, particularly with the "Mrs." crowd -- I smile and say "Yes ma'am, that's what I said: Miz". Works every time.

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

i got nothing except HUGS and see you on the flip side, sweetie. take care of yourself.

[emeraldsword.livejournal.com]

I use Ms myself and any time I write letters to my friends I use it on the envelopes. If/when they marry, they can let me know whether they'd prefer something else.