The Passing of The Possessive: A Study of Book-Titles

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If there is one particular advantage possessed by the Teutonic over the Romance languages in idiomatic clearness and precision it is that conferred by their ownership of a possessive case, almost the sole remaining monument to the fact that our ancestors spoke an inflected tongue. That we should still be able to speak of “the baker’s wife’s dog” instead of “the dog of the wife of the baker” certainly should be regarded by English-speaking people as a precious birthright. Yet, there are increasing evidences of a tendency to discard this only remaining case-ending and to replace its powerful backbone with the comparatively limp and cartilaginous preposition. This tendency has not yet appeared so much in our spoken as in our written language, and even here only in the most formal parts of it. It is especially noticeable in the diction of the purely formal title and heading.

That the reader may have something beyond an unsupported assertion that this is the case, I purpose to offer in evidence the titles of some recent works of fiction, and to make a brief statistical study of them.

The titles were taken from the adult fiction lists in the Monthly Bulletins of the New York Free Circulating Library from November, 1895, to March, 1897, inclusive, and are all such titles as contain a possessive, whether expressed by the possessive case or by the preposition “of” with the objective. Some titles are included in which the grammatical relation is slightly different, but all admit the alternative of the case-ending “‘s” or “of” followed by the objective case.

Of the 101 titles thus selected, 41 use the possessive case and 60 the objective with the preposition. This proportion is in itself sufficiently suggestive, but it becomes still more so by comparing it with the corresponding proportion among a different set of titles. For this purpose 101 fiction titles were selected, just as they appeared in alphabetical order, from a library catalogue bearing the date 1889; only those being taken, as before, that contain a possessive. Of these 101, 71 use the possessive case and 30 the objective with “of.” In other words, where eight years ago nearly three-quarters of such titles used the possessive case, now only two-fifths use it, a proportionate reduction of nearly one-half.

The change appears still more striking when we study the titles a little more closely. Of those in the earlier series there is not one that is not good, idiomatic English as it stands, whichever form is used; we may even say that there is not one that would not be made less idiomatic by a change to the alternative form. Among the recent titles, however, while the forms using the possessive case are all better as they are, of the 60 titles that use the objective with “of” only 22 would be injured by a change, and the reason why 8 of these are better as they are is simply that change would destroy euphony. Among these eight are

“The Indiscretion of the Duchess,”

“The Flight of a Shadow,”

“The Secret of Narcisse,”

where the more idiomatic forms,

“The Duchess’s Indiscretion,”

“Narcisse’s Secret,”

“A Shadow’s Flight,” etc.,

are certainly not euphonic.

Of the others, 8 would not be injured by a change, and no less than 30 would be improved from the standpoint of idiomatic English. It may be well to quote these thirty titles. They are:

“The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook,”

“The Statement of Stella Maberly,”

“The Shadow of John Wallace,”

“The Banishment of Jessop Blythe,”

“The Desire of the Moth,”

“The Island of Dr. Moreau,”

“The Damnation of Theron Ware,”

“The Courtship of Morrice Buckler,”

“The Daughter of a Stoic,”

“The Lament of Dives,”

“The Heart of Princess Osra,”

“The Death of the Lion,”

“The Vengeance of James Vansittart,”

“The Wife of a Vain Man,”

“The Crime of Henry Vane,”

“The Son of Old Harry,”

“The Honour of Savelli,”

“The Life of Nancy,”

“The Story of Lawrence Garthe,”

“The Marriage of Esther,”

“The House of Martha,”

“Tales of an Engineer,”

“Love-letters of a Worldly Woman,”

“The Way of a Maid,”

“The Soul of Pierre,”

“The Day of Their Wedding,”

“The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard,”

“The Hand of Ethelberta,”

“The Failure of Sibyl Fletcher,”

“The Love-affairs of an Old Maid.”

Of course, in such a division as this, much must depend on individual judgment and bias. Probably no two persons would divide the list in just the same way, but it is my belief that the general result in each case would be much the same. To me the possessive in every one of the above-quoted titles would have been more idiomatic, thus:

“Hilton Fernbrook’s Shadow,”

“Stella Maberly’s Statement,”

“John Wallace’s Shadow,”

“Morrice Buckler’s Courtship,”

“A Stoic’s Daughter,”

“Henry Vane’s Crime,” etc., etc.

In one case, at least, this fact has been recognized by a publisher, for “The Vengeance of James Vansittart,” whose title is included in the list given above, has appeared in a later edition as “James Vansittart’s Vengeance”—a palpable improvement.

I shall not discuss the cause of this change in the use of the possessive, though it seems to me an evident Gallicism, nor shall I open the question of whether it is a mere passing fad or the beginning of an actual alteration in the language. However this may be, it seems undeniable that there is an actual and considerable difference in the use of the possessive to-day and its use ten years ago, at least in formal titles and headings. I have confined myself to book-titles, because that is the department where the tendency presents itself to me most clearly; but it may be seen on street signs, in advertisements, and in newspaper headings. It is not to be found yet in the spoken language, at least it is not noticeable there, but it would be decidedly unsafe to prophesy that it will never appear there. Ten years from now we may hear about “the breaking of the arm of John Smith” and “the hat of Tom,” without a thought that these phrases have not been part of our idiomatic speech since Shakespeare’s time.