Miss Manners: I was offended by the artist’s name, but nobody would hear me out
Is it really 'honoring' a woman to tag her with her husband's name?
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was at an art show with my husband and mother-in-law that featured a 19th-century female artist. A brochure was given to us at entry that listed the artist’s name as “Mrs. John Smith,” with no first name given.
As an avid art lover and a feminist, I was taken aback, and said as much to the others. They both defended the practice, saying that that was the name she used when she was alive and that the writer of the brochure probably felt they were honoring her by using her husband’s name.
I would have been grateful had my husband been willing to hear me out as to why this offended me, but he wasn’t interested. Both he and his mother shut me down.
How should I have handled this — should I have kept my mouth shut? Also, did the use of the artist’s husband’s name “honor her,” or should the writer have been more cognizant of today’s sensibilities?
GENTLE READER: Shouldn’t you be more cognizant of past practices if you hope to understand a show featuring art from a past era?
Miss Manners can sympathize with your relatives in thinking it tedious to hear people from previous eras being condemned for not practicing the 21st century’s etiquette conventions.
In the 19th century, the construction “Mrs. John Smith” was so conventional that few people thought of it as either insulting the wife or honoring the husband. One who did was the feminist and abolitionist Lucy Stone, who kept her birth name after her 1855 marriage. But the Lucy Stone League, created in Stone’s name to encourage other women to follow suit, was not founded until 1921, and the older convention generally persisted well into the 20th century.
Women in the arts at that time tended to use their married surnames, usually with their own given names. But few theatergoers would have recognized the name of Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner, although she was one of the most celebrated actresses of her day. She chose to be billed as Mrs. Patrick Campbell, even after the frequently absent Mr. Campbell was long dead and she had married someone else.
What the writer of the show’s literature was respecting was not the subject’s husband, but a woman’s choice of her own name.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: When a birthday celebrant invites you to be part of their celebration by going on a cruise of their choice, is it normal now for the invited to be required to pay their own expenses — i.e., getting to the cruise ship plus the cruise itself?
I have had two such invitations recently, and had to regrettably decline because I cannot afford that type of expense.
GENTLE READER: These celebrants are not inviting you; they are suggesting that you vacation with them. It being their birthdays does not obligate you any more than if they had asked if you wanted to go hiking with them on your summer holiday.
All you need do is decline, expressing regret, but not your reason. Oh, and Miss Manners reminds you to add your wishes for their happy birthdays and voyages.
Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.