Last name, Mrs

   It is normally a married woman who is addressed in this way, the last name being that of her husband. This adoption of the husband’s last name is a social convention rather than a legal requirement, and in modern times an increasing number of women prefer to continue with their maiden names. Novelists rarely comment on the use of this ordinary social title, though Daphne du Maurier, in Rebecca, makes several points. She first has the young heroine of the book becoming excited at the prospect of changing her name: ‘I would be Mrs de Winter. I considered my name, and the signature on cheques, to tradesmen, and in letters asking people to dinner.’ The sentence ‘I would be Mrs de Winter’ is repeated many times. The heroine duly becomes Mrs de Winter, and indeed, is only known to the reader by that name, her first name and maiden name are not mentioned, but she is the second wife of Maxim de Winter. The fact that there was a highly successful first wife who bore the same name causes practical and psychological difficulties.

   Many married women are exposed to namesharing of another kind, since their mother-in-law will normally have the same social title as themselves. Married women who are known professionally before they marry by one name may continue to use that name for professional purposes, while using ‘Mrs’ with their husband’s last name socially. This applies not only to actresses and writers, but to teachers and the like. In some cases a woman who has a professional title such as ‘Doctor’ will use that with her maiden name, though she may also prefix it to her married name. There are minor problems associated with the latter usage: a couple introduced at a medical convention as Mr and Dr Smith would lead other members of the medical profession to assume that the husband was a surgeon, though he might well be a layman.

   The polite formality of ‘Mrs’ + last name may at times by insisted upon by either the speaker or the person being addressed. In Memento Mori, by Muriel Spark, a woman invites her housekeeper to address her in future by her first name. The woman concerned chooses to continue with ‘Mrs’ + last name to keep the relationship on a formal footing. In The Earnshaw Neighbourhood, by Erskine Caldwell, a black woman who is working as a home-help insists that her employer call her Mrs White, her married name. ‘I never heard of such a thing before from a coloured woman,’ is the comment that follows this from the white employer. Black Americans, however, are entitled. most people would say, to be sensitive about this issue. As Frank Yerby points out in A Woman Called Fancy, blacks were never normally addressed by polite social titles. The women are Mary Jane while they’re young, and after that theyre “Mammy” or “Auntie.”’

   In Britain, even unmarried female employees were usually addressed as ‘Mrs’, followed by their own maiden name, when they reached a certain age. In Desperate Remedies, by Thomas Hardy, Cytherea Graye becomes a lady’s maid. Someone says to her: ‘Mrs Graye, I believe?’ ‘I am not,’ she replies, then corrects herself. ‘Oh yes, yes, we are all mistresses.’ Her employer nevertheless has the following conversation with her: ‘“Now then Graye - By-the-bye, what do they call you downstairs?” “Mrs Graye,” said the handmaid. “Then tell them not to do any such absurd thing - not but that it is quite according to usage; but you are too young yet.”’ In Below Stairs, by Margaret Powell, there is a real-life account of such usage.

   Later on, after I had got to know her better, I said “Mrs McIlroy”. The Mrs was just a courtesy title; most cooks, if they had not married and if they were a miss and they were getting on in years, were called Mrs not only by the people they worked for, but by the other servants as well. When Margaret Powell herself became a cook to a Lady Gibbons, her employer decided that ‘I was too young to be called Mrs. She called the other servants by their surnames, but I didn’t like that, so we settled for “cook”,’

   A custom amongst the middle-classes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was for husbands to call their own wives ‘Mrs’ + last name. The novels of the time make it clear that such usage was widespread; in modern times it might be done jokingly, or by a newly married husband playfully reminding his bride of her new status. In Edna Ferber’s Showboat it occurs when the husband is especially angry with his wife: ‘No more scum than your own husband, Mrs Hanks, ma’am.’ Normal polite use of ‘Mrs’ + last name by strangers occurs frequently: The Limits of Love, by Frederic Raphael, to take just one example, has fifty-one instances of such usage. When the rare authorial comment occurs, it is normally in circumstances where the woman concerned is being addressed as ‘Mrs’ for the first time, soon after her marriage. In Up the City Road, by John Stroud, there is the additional factor that the married woman is only sixteen years old. ‘“Ah, well, that’s that, then. You’re Mrs Parsons now.” Mrs Parsons? Oh, no! It sounded so old. And she hadn’t hardly sort of - well, lived, really.’