Names

So the writing is going far more slowly than I had hoped.  I am about 2000 words in, and have covered TPR through the design and building of the school.  I did find that the Lusitania fit in nicely, and I have decided to ignore TPR's interest in psychical research.  Not sure I can get away with that decision; the Avon Weekly News-letter for June of '34 contains a note about the Avon Society for Psychical Research taking a recess for the summer.  Was this an unkind shot at TPR?  If so, did Pete know it (he says he found the note on his desk)?  Just one of a growing list of questions for Pete when next I see him.
In the meantime, I continue to struggle with what to call TPR.  I have been using "Theo" and "Theodate" to this point, but in nearly thirty years at AOF I have never seen or heard her referred to as anything other than either "Theodate Pope Riddle" or "Mrs. Riddle."  Of course, my other choices are "Effie," which is the name her parents chose, and "Miss Theodate," which is what the workmen called her, though not to her face.  My first inclination was to use Theo and Theodate, as her biographer does, until I reached the opening of school in '27, and then to use "Mrs. Riddle," as is the custom at school.  In this century, though, it seems a bit demeaning to define a person in terms of her husband.  I will resist here (and I think in the book) the impulse to comment on TPR's relationship with JWR and the nature of their marriage; even if it was ideal, it is still sexist to define her first and foremost as his wife.  Indeed, TPR fought sexism throughout her career; architecture was a man's world in the first half of the twentieth century.  Dearest of Geniuses begins with the story of the Nugent Publishing Company refusing to include her as planned in a book of prominent New York architects and their work - now that they had discovered she was a woman.  That was in 1915; in 1919, when TPR asked the American Institute of Architects to use her maiden name (because it was her professional name), they ignored the request and listed her as "Theodate Pope Riddle."  I am increasingly of the opinion that much of TPR's reputation for being eccentric and difficult to work with - though she was certainly both, to some degree - was a sexist response to her being a woman with the temerity to take her place in a man's profession and then to insist that she have a voice in the operation of the school she designed, built, and financed.  All that is a long-winded way of saying I am not very comfortable with "Mrs. Riddle" as the name of choice for the book.  I think I will continue using both Theodate and Theo and then see how that reads once the chapter is drafted.  (Presumably, TPR won't come up as frequently in the other chapters.)