17. mistress
Five variant spellings of mistress are found in the copy
used for the Paviers: mistres (eight +J1),
mistris
(twenty-two +J10), mistresse (forty-seven +J11),
mistrisse (one +J1), and misteris (thirty-five
+J5).
Of these five spellings, B prefers mistris and
mistresse and rejects the other three. Although Alice Walker
assigned mistresse to A and mistris to B as
characteristic spellings, B's treatment of the word in the Paviers indicates
that he employed both forms. On the surface, simple numerical superiority
does favor the -is form, but this is a result of the numerical
superiority of -is forms in copy.
