In the Name of the Father
For my columns and review writing class, we had to use a personal narrative to illuminate a larger issue. Here’s my stab below:
In the Name of the Father
At first, they amused me. Later, they perplexed me. Now, mailings addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Brandon X infuriates me.
Amused, Brandon warned that my angry and corrective letters to the mailings’ originators, instructing them on modern mailing etiquette, would be ignored. But I sent them anyway, signing Rachel Richardson with a large flourish on each return.
Long before Brandon popped the question, we discussed our views on marriage. The ambiguity of children hung in the air but one thing I stressed was that I will never become Mrs. Kinman and certainly not Mrs. Brandon X.
As my friends have gotten married, I’ve watched with fascination and more than a bit of irritation as they took the surname of their husbands. “I never really thought about it.” “I didn’t care and he did. “It was important to his father we pass on the family name.” “Hyphenated names are so confusing!” I didn’t really like my last name anyway.” “I wanted my children to have the same last name.”
On and on it goes - the rationalization of an outdated cultural practice steeped in paternal patronization.
It isn’t the aesthetics of name-changing that bothers me; it’s the principle. The tradition of assuming a husband’s last name is rooted in the now-defunct and outdated law of coverture, when a married woman’s social and legal identity was subsumed by her husband after proclaiming “I do.” It’s the same practice white slave-owners self-righteously imposed on black slaves.
Yet, a century later, the patrilineal torch has barely flickered. A survey conducted by Brides magazine in 2001 showed that 83 percent of women changed their last name. A similar survey conducted in 2004 by TheKnot.com revealed 81 percent of women taking their husband’s name.
What’s really in a name? Isn’t it but a technicality fluttering abstractly on bureaucratic forms? Hardly. If names are so arbitrary and devoid of any real meaning, why don’t more men take the last names of their wives? No, Mr. Smith, Jones or Simpson is born with his name, grows with it and dies with it, whether single, married or divorced. His identity remains constant.
Women, on the other hand, reincarnate with each marriage. Prey to the patriarchy, a wife’s identity is lost among words.
I realize the irony here: because of our patriarchal history, my surname is really a man’s. Sure, my last name is also my father’s, but I’ve lived with it for 28 years, molding it, recasting it, making it uniquely my own. It is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes, the timbre of my laugh, the mole on my cheek.
When Brandon and I get married, ours will be a partnership. Not a merger. Never a takeover. At our wedding, the officiant will conclude the ceremony with “And now, introduced for the first time as husband and wife, Brandon X and Rachel Richardson.”
Not abandoning our names in favor of our husbands’ names won’t, in itself, change the world. But maybe it will change the way people think - just a little - about the man as the “head of the household” and all those who inhabit it.
As for future mailings addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Brandon X, I intend to return to sender with the words “Mrs. Brandon X is not known at this address.”
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