Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household
Management: Commanding an Army
The
term ‘mistress’ is used frequently when referring to the reader as the book is
mainly to advise young women, mistresses, how to run a household. The term ‘mistress’
however has a range of connotations; the use of the word has changed over time.
For example The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citations for mistress are
from the fourteenth century when it meant ‘a woman having control or
authority’. The idea of ‘mistress’ having dominant connotations originates from
the Latin term ‘Domina’ which means ‘female master’. You could argue that the
term ‘mistress’ has experienced pejoration as instead of representing a female
who is powerful and dominant, it is often now used to identify a ‘lover’ or ‘sweetheart’
which if often associated with negative concepts such as a mistress is often
used to describe a relatively long-term female lover who is not married to her
partner, especially when her partner is married. As the book was written in
1861 it is evident that the term ‘mistress’ was used in a positive way as it links
to its original connotations of being an independent female and therefore ‘commanding
an army’ in relation to running a household.
