“There are cases where it may be allowable and necessary to use the husband’s initials when naming or addressing his wife, but usually it is best for her to retain and be known by the name her parents gave her. The name or title of her husband gives no additional dignity or character to her, and it sinks her own individuality in him; which no woman should allow.
“Ever since the world began all women of note have been known by their own Christian names. Adam named his wife Eve and we have no account of her ever being called Mrs. Adam. Victoria of England has never called herself Mrs. Albert Saxe-Coburg, nor has Eugénie been known as Mrs. Emperor Louis Napoleon. Go back through all history and all married queens, all members of royal houses, all married women of any distinction such as artists, authors, scholars, teachers, actresses, singers, etc., have ever been known and called by their Christian names. In our own day and country this is the universal custom. Lydia H. Sigourney, Emma Willard, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Lucretia Mott, Frances D. Gage, Mary A. Livermore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Paulina W. Davis, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Lucy Stone Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Celia Burleigh, and a host of others of equal or less note never called themselves Mrs. John, Mrs. Tom and Mrs. Henry. Anna Mary Howitt, Dinah Maria Muloch, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning may be given as instances of English writers who have seen fit to drop their own names and adopt the Christian name and title of their husbands. The wife of our first president is known and revered in memory as Martha Washington, instead of Mrs. George or Mrs. General Washington; and Susannah Wesley is far better known than Mrs. Rev. John Wesley.
“In law, women must use their own names and no document is legal unless it bears the Christian name of the woman who signed it. Her appointment to any office is always made in her own name and not that of her husband. And yet many women have gotten the idea that their husbands’ names and titles in some way add to their dignity and importance and so appropriate them to their own use.
“May the day soon come when all this will be done away and women bear honored titles of their own, earned and conferred, but not borrowed!
“A. B.”
IS IT RIGHT FOR WOMEN TO LECTURE?
Mrs. Bloomer answered this question through the press as follows:
“The press has been very severe, in some instances, in its strictures upon a certain woman of this state for leaving home and husband to go before our public as a lecturer, thereby as they claim causing her husband to commit a fearful crime.
“Now supposing, instead of being out lecturing, and home frequently, this woman had gone away on a three months’ visit to friends—as many ladies are in the habit of doing—would the press be as ready to blame her as it now is? Would she be, and are other women, guilty of all the crime and wrongdoing which she or their husbands may commit in their absence? And would it be right, would it be manly, to publicly accuse these women and hold them up to censure? Is not their suffering already sufficient without this added sting? Why, pray, is it a more heinous offense to leave home to lecture than to visit, to travel abroad, or to sojourn for months at fashionable watering places?
“I know nothing of the domestic affairs of the person referred to. She has been to some extent a lecturer on temperance. Whether led into it by pecuniary necessity, or solely from inclination or a desire to do good, I never knew. But be the case as it may she is the first woman lecturer, so far as my knowledge extends, whose husband has ever disgraced both himself and her by such or any similar crime or any crime at all; while the cases are frequent of wives who are keepers at home and faithful guardians of family relations being humbled and disgraced by husbands guilty of all manner of crimes and wickedness. Men claim to be the stronger both mentally and physically. Then why are they ready to shoulder upon women the responsibility of their own wrongdoing? Why make the so-called ‘weaker vessel’ the scapegoat to bear their sins?