Mastering the Mistress

I worked quite intensively yesterday, proofreading and editing a travel guidebook. With the usual pauses to reconsider proper and common nouns – African wild cat or African Wild Cat?  Blue wildebeest or Blue Wildebeest?

This conundrum continued to occupy brain space deep into the early hours of the morning as I sleeplessly tossed and turned. It’s in these moments that my brain transforms into a golden snitch zooming around in a particularly frenetic game of Quidditch.  If the reference escapes you, read anything in the Harry Potter series.

Why are titles proper rather than common nouns?  Why do we persist with three female titles – Miss, Mrs and Ms? What is the preoccupation with marital status or conversely, screening the status with the ubiquitous Miz? Why don’t we use a blanket ‘Mistress’ as the feminine version of ‘Mister’?  Why are young boys titled ‘Master’ yet grown men ‘Mister’?

By now the snitch was in full manic mode and so far out into left field it had exited the room. Thoughts and arguments tumbled and skyrocketed at top speed, kicking slumber into touch. Another note to self to really, really stop having that after dinner coffee; caffeine does gymnastics in my sleep cortex.

Is it fear of a lack of options? The horror of being categorised either married, unmarried or one of the above? Does anyone really care?

Mrs is an abbrieviation of Mistress and I’m happy to be a Mistress in all connotations of the word. Even the less salubrious meaning is rather daring and elicits a frisson of excitement. Let’s lose the overpidgeonholing thing and match Mister with Mistress, Ms for short (no feminist statement here, simply the first and last letters of the word, a la Mr).

Simplify the world for our daughters, with a single title that denotes their gender rather than their marital status and removes the rather meaningless but nonetheless anguished over decision women make at some point to either go with traditional ‘subjugation’ policy and take on a new title and name or to follow the feminist ‘correct’ path.

If a girl is ‘Ms’ from birth to death, the decision about taking her husband’s name becomes one of convenience and choice as she’ll be Ms whether married or not. Ms Smith can elect to become Ms Blenkinsop or remain as she was without the confusion of then putting ‘Married’ under her title Miss.

Let’s face it, ‘Ms’ hasn’t taken off as a mainstream choice, possibly because the issue is overcomplicated and implicitly suggests rebellion or rampant feminist. And can you be a ‘Ms’ with your spouse’s name, or is Ms currently reserved for maiden names, whether the bearer is married or not? 

This is something worth marching about, an issue to be clarified and decided once and for all. At the very least, there will be an ink and space saving on official forms with the removal of two title options!