lady

For other uses, see Lady (disambiguation).

A lady is a woman who is the counterpart of a lord or, the counterpart of a gentleman. A lady is also a woman who folds, presses, and stretches dough such as bread; in other words, a lady is also known as a bread-kneading woman.^{[citation needed]}

Portrait of Augusta, Lady Gregory, who embodies British ladylike-ness.

Etymology and usage

The word comes from Old English hlǣfdige; the first part of the word is a mutated form of hlāf, "loaf, bread", also seen in the corresponding hlāford, "lord". The second part is usually taken to be from the root dig-, "to knead", seen also in dough; the sense development from bread-kneader, or bread-maker, or bread-shaper, to the ordinary meaning, though not clearly to be traced historically, may be illustrated by that of "lord".

The primary meaning of "mistress of a household" is now mostly obsolete, save for the occasional use of old-fashioned phrases such as "lady of the house." This meaning is retained, however, in the title First Lady, used for the wife of an elected president or prime minister. In many European languages the equivalent term serves as a general form of address equivalent to the English Missus (usually seen as Mrs.): (French Madame, Spanish Señora, Italian Signora, German Frau, Polish Pani, etc.

The special use of the word as a title of the Virgin Mary, usually Our Lady, represents the Latin Domina Nostra. In Lady Day and Lady Chapel the word is properly a genitive, representing hlǣfdigan "of the Lady".

The word is also used as a title of the Wiccan Goddess, The Lady.

John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott, 1888 (Tate Gallery, London)

British usage

As a title of nobility the uses of "Lady" are mainly paralleled by those of "Lord". It is thus a less formal alternative to the full title giving the specific rank, of marchioness, countess, viscountess or baroness, whether as the title of the husband's rank by right or courtesy, or as the lady's title in her own right. A widow becomes the dowager, e.g. The Dowager Lady Smith.

In the case of sons of a duke or marquess, who by courtesy have "Lord" prefixed to their given and family name, the wife is known by the husband's given and family name with "Lady" prefixed, e.g. The Lady John Smith. The daughters of dukes, marquesses and earls are by courtesy Ladies; here that title is prefixed to the given and family name of the lady, e.g. The Lady Jane Smith, and this is preserved if the lady marries a commoner, e.g. Mr John and The Lady Jane Smith. The predicate 'The' should be used prior to "Lady" or "Lord" in all cases, except after a divorce for women who do not hold the courtesy title of "Lady" in their own right, e.g. Heather, Lady McCartney or Jane, Lady Smith (the ex-wife of The Lord John Smith); cf Diana, Princess of Wales, that lady's final title after her divorce.

"Lady" is also the customary title of the wife of a baronet or knight. The proper title, now only used in legal documents or on sepulchral monuments, is "Dame". In the latter case, "Dame" is prefixed to the given name of the wife followed by the surname of the husband, thus Dame Jane Smith, but in the former, "Lady" with the surname of the husband only, Sir John and The Lady Smith. When a woman divorces a knight and he marries again, the new wife will be The Lady Smith while the ex-wife becomes Jane, Lady Smith. If a knight dies, his widow becomes Dowager Lady Smith (no the).

During the 15th and 16th centuries princesses or daughters of the blood royal were usually known by their first names with "The Lady" prefixed, e.g. The Lady Elizabeth.

More recent usage: social class

In more recent years, usage of the word lady is even more complicated. Journalist William Allen White noted one of the difficulties in his 1946 autobiography. He relates that a woman who had paid a fine for prostitution came to his newspaper to protest, not that the fact of her conviction was reported, but that the newspaper had referred to her as a "woman" rather than a "lady." Since that incident, White assured his readers, his papers referred to human females as "women", with the exception of police court characters, who were all "ladies".

White's anecdote touches on a phenomenon that others have remarked on as well. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in a difference reflected in Nancy Mitford's essay "U vs. non-U", lower class women strongly preferred to be called "ladies" while women from higher social backgrounds were content to be identified as "women." Alfred Ayers remarked in 1881 that upper middle class female store clerks were content to be "saleswomen," while lower class female store clerks, for whom their job represented a social advancement, indignantly insisted on being called "salesladies." Something of this sense may also be underneath Kipling's lines:

The Colonel's lady and Rosie O'Grady —

Sisters under the skin

These social class issues, while no longer on the front burner in the twenty-first century, have imbued the formal use of "lady" with something of an odour of irony (e.g: "my cleaning lady").

It remains in use colloquially, for example, as a counterpart to "gentleman," in the phrase "ladies and gentlemen," and is generally interchangeable (in a strictly informal sense) with "woman" (as in, "The lady at the store said I could return this item within thirty days."). "Ladies" is also the normal text on the signs to any female toilet in a public place in the UK, again paired with "Gentlemen" (or "Gents").

More recent usage: sexism (US)

Non-sexist language guidelines forbid its use to refer attributively to the sex of a working person, as in lady lawyer and lady doctor. Many find these to have a condescending nuance not shared by female lawyer or woman doctor; compare poetess for a similar problem.

Advocates of non-sexist language recommend not using the word at all, whereas others permit its parallel use in the same circumstances in which a man would be called a gentleman or lord (for example, titling washrooms Men and Ladies would be considered sexist, but using either Men and Women or Ladies and Gentlemen would be acceptable; as is landlady as the parallel of landlord.)

In the United States, notably among younger feminists of the 1990s and 00s influenced by riot grrl, "lady" has occasionally been reclaimed in a more ironic fashion. For example, Miranda July's Joanie 4 Jackie chain letter videotape project is said to consist of "lady-made movies," a feminist music and video distributor in North Carolina called itself Mr. Lady Records, and chorus of Le Tigre's song "LT Tour Theme" from the album Feminist Sweepstakes (2000) declares itself to be written "for the ladies and the fags."

More recent usage; a courteous title

Lady has only been used as the female equivalent of a gentleman, but as a socially acceptable female, the opposite of a harlot or bitch.
It is also referred to towards the end of the Usher song "Yeah!", in which Ludacris says men "want a lady in the street, but a freak in the bed." This says that a lady is proper and polite in public. (Cf "a lady in the sittingroom, a whore in the bedroom").

Ladies in fiction

• Lady of the Lake - A prominent figure in the Arthurian legends.
• Lady Macbeth - The clever and conniving wife of Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth.
• Lady Catherine de Bourgh - Mr Darcy's aunt in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
• Lady Susan - a minor character in Jane Austen.
• Lady Dedlock - Wife of the baronet Sir Leicester Dedlock in Charles Dickens's Bleak House.
• Lady Bracknell - Gwendolen Fairfax's mother in Oscar Wilde's iconic play The Importance of Being Earnest.
• Lady Windermere - Lady with unblemished reputation from Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan: A Play About a Good Woman.
• the title character in D.H. Lawrence's scandalous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover
• Lady Westholme - A running candidate of Parliament from Agatha Christie's Appointment With Death.
• Lady Hester Random - Autocratic dowager in Tea with Mussolini.
• Ladies Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen from Lord of the Rings.
• Lady Jessica - Of the House Atreides in the Dune series.
• Lady Cassandra - Villain of the 9th and 10th Doctor Who, who appeared in "The End of The World" and "New Earth".
• Lady Everglot - The lady of the family Everglots, from Corpse Bride.

Kenny Rogers sings "Lady"

"Lady" is also the title of a 1980 love song by Kenny Rogers. It reached #1 in the US pop charts for 6 weeks and #12 in the UK. It was written by Rogers friend, Lionel Richie (who also did the song himself). The song appeared on Rogers' 1980 "Greatest Hits" album, which also reached Number 1 in the United States and sold over 30 million copies world-wide.

References

• Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (Merriam-Webster, 1989), ISBN 0-87779-132-5.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Donate to Wikimedia