teachers' personal lives / ''Madam''

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 190340

Lynda wrote:
> > I always thought Madam was a title for a Hogwarts affiliated
> > staff who was a female who was not an actual teacher. Therefore
> > Madam Pomfrey, the nurse and Madam Hooch, who isn't a proper
> > teacher but the quidditch and flying coach.
> 
> June:
> Exactly, Lynda is correct about this. To use Madam as a title to
> show someone as married, that would be France or Quebec, Canada.
> Madam meaning Mrs is French not British.
>
Carol responds:

And yet Madame Maxime, the French witch who's headmistress of Beauxbatons, isn't married. It seems that both "Madam" and "Madame" function as titles of respect that a professional woman (or even a glorified seamstress like Madam Malkin or a pub owner like Madam Rosmerta, who combines "Madam" with her first name) can choose to use. It seems to function something like "Ms.", allowing a woman to hide her marital status, except that it adds a hint of increased social status as well. OTOH, happy housewives like Molly Weasley are addressed as "Mrs." (with no indication that the term is derogatory) and young, unmarried girls are addressed as "Miss" by their teachers, just as the boys are addressed as "Mr." (I think it would have been "Master" in Victorian England and maybe even into the 1950s, at least for Muggles, but the Wizards seem to have a slightly different terminology.

Most likely, JKR didn't think it out. She may have started with the nicely alliterative "Madam Malkin" and gone from there. In any case, the use of "Madam" extends beyond Hogwarts into the British WW in general.

Carol, just thinking on her keyboard and arriving at no real conclusions