Miss J.R. Wilheim, if You Please

Blogging, I've come to realize, is a strange form of communication. It seems to combine elements of very personal communication, like a telephone call, with elements of broadcasting. You never know who among your acquaintance is really reading your blog--until the odd reply comes in.

This evening, I took a look at the Far East Side Minyan and found a reply from (Mrs.) Leah Silberberg (Jenner), someone I met when she started coming to the West Side Minyan at Ansche Chesed a bit over a year ago. In reply to my hesitance about being asked to rename my Taiwanese students, Leah commented, from the perspective of Jewish tradition, on why she detests being called Mrs. Paul Jenner. I can appreciate her point of view, but thought I would add on some of my own thoughts about titles in English.

The traditional etiquette of women's titles, in case you don't know it, worked as follows:

A young girl was known as Miss First Name (i.e., Miss Scarlett). When she "came out" and got her first flannel shirt (okay, actually a rather prissy white dress the size of Texas), she would be either Miss O'Hara, if she were the eldest sister, or Miss Scarlett O'Hara, if she had younger sisters. Scarlett and her sisters collectively would be known as the Misses O'Hara.

Once Miss (Scarlett) O'Hara married, she became Mrs. Husband's First Name, Husband's Last Name (i.e., Mrs. Rhett Butler). She kept this name for life unless she suffered the stigma of divorce, at which point she would become Mrs. Scarlett Butler (in America) or Mrs. O'Hara Butler (in Britain). Two sisters-in-law who shared the same last name would be known as the Mmes. Last Name--i.e., the Mmes. Scarlett and Melanie Wilkes (okay, here's where my Gone With the Wind examples break down; Scarlett and Melanie may have shared Ashley, but they never shared a last name).

So it was always a cumbersome system. It dried to distinguish between too many different things with too few titles. Common sense would dictate that, if people really wanted to know if a woman was divorced, a separate title for a divorcee should have developed. But none ever did.

Nowadays, of course, we have Ms. , and somehow Miss seems to have fallen by the wayside, except in England, the Deep South, and contexts that involve the wearing of an ermine cape and a tiara--although, oddly, the only woman I know who strongly prefers tobe called Miss is a divorced woman from New England who has never, to my knowledged, entered a beauty contest.

But it seems to me Ms. doesn't always do what it's supposed to do. For instance, in professional settings, I notice that Ms. often seems to be the title of preference only for women not yet eligible to join the Red Hat Society, older women being called Mrs. I may never have seen The West Wing, but when my mother started talking to me about a character on it named Mrs. Landingham, I knew instinctively her childbearing years were probably behind her.

I remember reading somewhere that William Safire finally game the use of Ms. his blessing when Geraldine Ferraro ran for vice president, and it was clear that neither Miss nor Mrs. was really appropriate for her, as Ferraro was neither her maiden name nor the name of her then-current husband. It seems clear, also, that the existing titles also don't really work in a lesbian context. Confronted with the question of how to address an envelope to a lesbian couple who used the same last name, Judith Martin (a.k.a. Miss Manners) suggested the form, the Mmes. Scarlett and Melanie Wilkes. But, as I noted above, this could indicate that the women in question are sisters-in-law living together, not a lesbian couple.

On a somewhat different note, it's always struck me that, where the old system discriminated against women by forcing them to reveal their marital--or should I say, hymenal--status, our current system discriminates against men, since it now gives women four different titles to play around with, whereas we only get one. Well, maybe two if you count Master, but I don't think even spoiled sons of the British landed gentry get called that any more.

So I wonder--why don't I at least the choice of signaling to the world my marital status, if I want to? I think there are circumstances where being able to do this would be a real advantage. There just doesn't seem to be a title for this. Mr. is neutral. Master is gone and shouldn't be revived. And adopting Miss would make way too man people assume that I do a mean Joan Crawford imitation.

The best I can come up with his Bachelor--abbreviation Br. But I can't quite see it catching on. Mr. could do quite all right for married men. But what should a divorced man be called? Or one who wins a muscle-building contest on the boardwalk at Atlantic City? Or a man who builds his life with another man, with or without a marriage, civil union, or other legal framework?

How do we give this system an overhaul?

All suggestions welcome.