I can’t say I spent all my engagement writing out the following: Mrs Perrins, Mrs L Perrins, Mrs P Perrins, but I definitely indulged myself a little. So I was somewhat surprised to read that there is a woman in the Irish Times who is sad that another woman changed her surname when she got married.
A person who follows Áine Kenny on Instagram is guilty of being eaten by the patriarchy. This lady “just got married and changed her last name. Despite not knowing why she’s changed her surname to match her new husband’s, I (Áine Kenny) can‘t help but feel a little sad. Another one bites the dust. Another good woman in a heterosexual relationship lost to the Mrs machine.” Cry me a river.
Kenny objects to the tradition of a woman changing her surname and adopting her husbands as one of “symbolic misogyny.” In fact “while women in Ireland are no longer viewed as their husband’s property, changing one’s surname is still a loss of identity.”
Yes it is. Which is why you should do it. When a woman gets married they are losing their identity. You are no longer a single lady, once he puts a ring on it, you are no longer a single pringle ready to mingle. You are someone’s wife. This is indeed a profound change of identity.
Traditionally you are no longer a maiden and instead a matron, hence the term matrimony. You may in the near future become a mother to the children of the man you have married. So yes it makes perfect sense that you would carry the same surname as those children and that of the father.
If you do not wish to become a wife and be lost to the Mrs machine, then don’t get married. Perhaps you are better suited to a civil partnership.
In fact such was the privilege of being married, that once a daughter got married she took precedence over any older sister in the family. Lydia relishes this in Pride and Prejudice. Her hasty elopement with evil Wickham was patched up with a marriage. When Lydia returns to the Longbourn she delights in telling her eldest sister Miss Jane Bennet that she can enter the house ahead of her, for she is a married woman.
Lydia literally pulls rank. “No Jane I take your place now, you must go lower. For I am a married woman. Mrs Wickham.”
I also note that when Lady Edith Crawley was famously jilted at the altar by Sir Anthony Strallan her misery is compounded the next day in the knowledge that she as a single woman must “go down for breakfast.” A married woman is served breakfast in bed, I can only assume because she is exhausted from nocturnal activities. There were plenty of privileges attached to being a married woman.
Although women are no longer the legal property of their husbands and cannot be locked up in an asylum should they become inconvenient (a favourite of men) they do in a sense belong to their husband when they get married. And what might I ask is wrong with that? The problem is not belonging to another, the problem if any arises, is if that other becomes controlling, abusive or in sum unworthy.
Ephesians 25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” Some interpret this as that the husband should lay down his life for his wife. If this is the requirement when push comes to shove, then I think the very least a wife can do is take his name on marriage. Is this feeding the patriarchy? Yes it is. The wife takes her husband’s name on marriage and he promises to sacrifice himself for her in return. Seems like a fair deal to me.
Kenny also says, “From a young age, women are fed the narrative that our biggest achievement will be having a wedding and becoming a wife. Men are not given the same message, when‘s the last time you heard a man aspiring to become someone’s husband?”
Em, yesterday. The internet exists. Men do aspire to become husbands, they may not be quite as obvious as the women but they do. And I absolutely think Irish society still affords more respect to men who are married than the bachelor, as well it should.
So I say to the single ladies out there getting married, take your husband’s surname. You are acquiring a new identity and if you do not want that new identity you might want to ask yourself why that is. Husbands to be, if your intended does not want the world to know that she is your Mrs, again think long and hard about why that might be. But most of all, best of luck.