LADIES’ PAGE.
ONE of the reasons that Mr. Gladstone gave for his steady opposition to Women's Suffrage was that "the woman's vote must lead to the woman's seat in Parliament". That some women would try to make the one lead to the other might, indeed, be reasonably anticipated; and the sequence of events has not long tarried. The lady still known at her own request as "Miss Mary MacArthur," though she is the wife of Mr. Anderson. M.P., has been formally adopted as the candidate of the Labour Party for a Midland borough. It is by no means a necessary consequence that those having a right to vote should also have a right to stand for election, for the Church of England clergy have always been entitled to vote but ineligible for sitting in Parliament. It might be thought that this particular candidate would meet with a further difficulty owing to her continuing as a married woman to use her maiden name. This was settled, however, by Mrs. Fenwick Miller’s election to the London School Board under the same circumstances.
Her return was objected to on the ground that she had not been correctly described on the nomination paper; but the Law Officers of the Crown, to whom the question was referred as one relating to a public election, stated that there is no law in this country compelling a woman to take her husband's surname. That lady, however, adopted the usual prefix for a married woman; "Miss" Mary MacArthur, and another well-known follower of the example, "Miss" Violet Markham —sister of the late Sir A. Markham, M.P., and wife of Mr. Carruthers—have continued to use not only their maiden names, but also, what is another question, the prefix of "Miss," which is universally understood to mean that the person so addressed is not married.
All such social customs, however, are matters of habit, based on convention. In Spain, married women continue to use their maiden names, with the husband's added—"Mrs. Smith and Jones," as we might say—and the children take both parents' names. Scottish women's maiden names are invariably used in legal documents, and until recently they were often called by the same name after marriage as before. To give only two instances where the sons of women so called became famous—Sir James Barrie, in his Life of his own mother, calls her "Margaret Ogilvie," never "Mrs. Barrie"; and Sir William Chambers, founder of the well-known publishing house, says of his grandmother, "According to an old custom in Scotland, she was, though married, known only by her maiden name, which was Margaret Kerr." In Alsace it is usual for the family names of a married couple to be combined, and both spouses use the joint cognomen thus "Miss" MacArthur and Mr. Anderson would there be Mr. and Mrs. MacArthur-Anderson.
It is obviously socially convenient for man and wife, the father and mother of a family, to bear the same name; but, on the other hand, it is not only an extinguishing of the wife's individuality, but very disadvantageous to a woman who has made some reputation as a writer, painter, public worker, or who has taken a degree while single, and so on, to sink her identity on marriage; and it is so unpleasant to a father to see his name lost, by his heiress marrying, that we know that it is quite common for the husband of such an heiress to consent to take his wife's name. A very striking instance of this being done for the sake of a great reputation instead of a vast fortune is that of the descendants of Sir Walter Scott. His descendants in each generation have been females only, and the men who have married these ladies have taken the name of Scott, hyphened with their own (the Scott last), so that the great author's patronymic should not be covered and lost. In English society, again, it is usual for the widow of a titled man to keep her deceased husband's name, for the sake of the title, on remarrying with a commoner. It was not always the English custom even to call married and single women by a distinctive prefix. In the eighteenth century every girl who had left the schoolroom was called "Mrs.," just as every man, married or single, is known as "Mr."
[Mary MacArthur had been involved from the start of the war in the Central Committee on Women's Employment, which promoted employment schemes for women who had lost their jobs due to the disruption to trade caused by the war. She was the Labour candidate in the Stourbridge constituency in the 1919 General Election, but was defeated.]
No comments:
Post a Comment