'Mistress'

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.