Mistress (lover)

Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV of France. circa 1750

A mistress is a man's long term female sexual partner and companion. Historically, the term has denoted a "kept woman", who is maintained in a comfortable (or even lavish) lifestyle by a wealthy man so that she will be available for his sexual pleasure. Today however, it is used primarily to refer to the companion of a man who is married to another woman; in the case of an unmarried man it is usual to speak of a "girlfriend" or "partner." The relationship is generally stable and at least semi-permanent; however, the couple do not live together openly.

Historically a man "kept" a mistress. As the term implies, he was responsible for her debts and provided for her in much the same way as he did his wife. In more recent and emancipated times, it is more likely that the mistress has a job of her own, and is less, if at all, financially dependent on the man. It is not uncommon for a man to have acknowledged children by his mistress.

The mistress historically

William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress, plate 2, from 1731 showing Moll Hackabout as a mistress, on her way to becoming a common street whore.

Historically, mistresses are often thought of in terms of the best-known women such as Nell Gwynne and Madame de Pompadour. However, the keeping of a mistress was not confined to monarchs and the nobility but permeated down through the ranks. Anyone who could afford one, regardless of social position, could have a mistress.

A mistress is not a prostitute. Both professions exchange sex for money, but the principal difference is that a mistress keeps herself exclusively reserved for one man, in much the same way as a wife. She often provides companionship as well as sex, and demands a lavish lifestyle as well as actual cash. Nor are mistresses always confined to the obscurity of a clandestine relationship; in the courts of Europe, particularly Versailles and Whitehall in the 17th and 18th centuries, a mistress often wielded great power and influence. The mistresses of both Louis XV and Charles II were often considered to exert great influence over their lovers, their relationships being an open secret.

While the extremely wealthy might keep a mistress for life (as George II of the United Kingdom did with "Mrs Howard"), even after they were no longer romantically linked, such was not the case for most kept women. In 1736, when George II was newly ascendant, Henry Fielding (in Pasquin) has his Lord Place say, "…but, miss, every one now keeps and is kept; there are no such things as marriages now-a-days, unless merely Smithfield contracts, and that for the support of families; but then the husband and wife both take into keeping within a fortnight." Wealthy merchants and young nobles might have a kept woman, and being a mistress was typically an occupation for younger women, who might go on to marriage, if fortunate.

The 19th-century mistress

During the 19th century when morals became more puritanical, the keeping of a mistress became more circumspect, but conversely the tightening of morality also created a greater desire for a man to have a mistress. When an upper class man married a woman of equal rank, as was the norm, it was likely that she had been strictly brought up to believe that sexual intercourse was firmly for procreation rather than recreation. Some men thus went to a mistress if they wanted a less prudish female companion.

Role reversal

On occasions it is possible that the mistress is in a superior position both financially and socially to her lover. Catherine the Great was known to have been the mistress of several men during her reign; however, like many powerful women of her era, in spite of being a widow free to marry, she chose not to share her power with a husband, preferring to maintain absolute power alone.

In literature, D. H. Lawrence's work Lady Chatterley's Lover portrays a situation where a woman becomes the mistress of her husband's gamekeeper. Until recently, a woman's taking a lover socially inferior to herself was considered much more shocking than the reverse situation.

The mistress today

During the 20th century, as many women have become better educated and more able to support themselves, fewer women find satisfaction in the position of being a mistress and are more likely to pursue relationships with unmarried men. Since divorce has become more socially acceptable, it is now easier for men to divorce their wives and marry the women who, in earlier eras, would have been their mistresses. However, the practice of having a mistress still exists among some married men, especially the wealthy. In Europe, for example, many cultures continue to acknowledge and condone the practice of keeping mistresses.

Occasionally, men marry their mistresses. The late Sir James Goldsmith, on marrying his mistress, Lady Annabel Birley, declared, "When one marries one's mistress, one creates a vacancy".

The mistress in literature

In both John Cleland's Fanny Hill and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, as well as in countless novels of feminine peril, the distinction between a "kept woman" and a prostitute is all-important. Apologists for the practice of mistresses referred to the practice in the ancient Near East of keeping a concubine and would frequently quote verses from the Old Testament to show that mistress-keeping was an ancient practice that was, if not acceptable, at least understandable. John Dryden, in Annus Mirabilis, even attempted to suggest that the king's keeping of mistresses and making of bastards was a result of his abundance of generosity and spirit. In its more sinister form, the theme of being "kept" is never far from the surface in novels about women as victims in the 18th century in England, whether in the novels of Eliza Haywood or Samuel Richardson (whose heroines in Pamela and Clarissa are both put in a position of being threatened with sexual degradation and being reduced to the status of a kept object).

With the Romantics of the early 19th century, the subject of keeping becomes problematized, in that a non-marital sexual union can occasionally be celebrated as a woman's free choice and a noble alternative. Maryann Evans (better known as George Eliot) defiantly lived "in sin" with a married man, partially as a sign of her independence of middle class morality, but her independence required that she not be "kept." Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre (1848) presents impassioned arguments on both sides of this question, as Rochester, unable to be free of his insane wife, tries to persuade Jane to live with him, which she resists.