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Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman
Why do women become mistresses, and is a mistress merely a wife-in-waiting, or is she the very definition of the emancipated, independent female? In Mistresses, Elizabeth Abbott intelligently examines the motives and morals of some of the most infamous and fascinating women in history and literature. Drawing intimate portraits of those who have—whether by chance, coercion, or choice†“ assumed this complex role, from Chinese concubines and European royal mistresses to mobster molls and trophy girlfriends, Mistresses offers a rich blend of history, personal biography, and cultural insight.
522 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 1, 2011
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August 10, 2021
Book: Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman
Author: Elizabeth Abbott
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (1 September 2011)
Language: English
Hardcover: 528 pages
Item Weight: 794 g
Dimensions: 16.46 x 4.39 x 24.03 cm
Price: 1575/-
In The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, a mistress is “a woman other than a wife with whom a man has a longstanding sexual relationship,” while a concubine is “a woman who cohabits with a man without being his wife.”
These classifications are too indistinguishable to of use, and the latter does not discriminate between a concubine and a common-law wife, nor does it clearly describe the Eastern concubine, who frequently but by no means always lives with her lover-master and his family.
Another problem is that in the Western world, the words ‘mistress’ and ‘concubine’ are often used synonymously. The author uses a working definition of mistress as, “a woman voluntarily or forcibly engaged in a relatively long-term sexual relationship with a man who is usually married to another woman.”
This definition applies to concubines as well, whose particularities are further discussed in the chapters devoted to their cultures.
Mistressdom is universally linked with marriage, human society’s most essential institution, and almost mechanically implies marital disloyalty, sometimes by the husband, sometimes by the wife.
Indeed, marriage is a key element in determining who is a mistress and who is not.
Though many people assume that falseness dents marriage, many others believe that, ironically, it shores marriage up.
Frenchmen, for example, can justify the cinq à sept, the after-office-hours assignation a man enjoys with his mistress, by quoting French writer Alexandre Dumas’s pithy observation: “The chains of marriage are so heavy that it often takes two people to carry them, and sometimes three.”
In all societies and at all times, the custom of arranged marriages has been most likely to produce mistressdom and concubinage because parents or other relatives selected their children’s spouses for economic reasons or to cement family, business or political alliances and usually dismissed romantic love as an irrelevant, self-indulgent and sometimes even treacherous foundation for a marital relationship.
Husbands and wives were expected to cohabit and operate as an economic unit, and to produce and raise children. They were not expected to quiver at each other’s touch, to adore one another or to fulfil each other’s emotional needs.
This nearly 600 page tome has been divided into thirteen broad chapters:
CHAPTER 1 - Love out of Wedlock in the Ancient World
CHAPTER 2 - Eastern Concubines and Harems
CHAPTER 3 - Whose Whore? Europe’s Royal Mistresses
CHAPTER 4 - Marital Arrangements in Aristocratic Circles
CHAPTER 5 - The Clandestine Consorts of (Un) Celibate Clerics
CHAPTER 6 – Conquerors and Their Mistresses
CHAPTER 7 - Interracial Sexual Unions Within the “Peculiar Institution”
CHAPTER 8 - Sexual Unions and the Jewish Question
CHAPTER 9 - Mistresses as Muses
CHAPTER 10 - Mistresses of Men Above the Law
CHAPTER 11 - Mistresses as Trophy Dolls
CHAPTER 12 - Fallen Women: Mistresses in Literature
CHAPTER 13 - The 1960s Transform Marriage and Mistressdom
While studying the history of mistresses through time, one observes that sometimes romantic love developed after the fact but more often, regard, tolerance and resignation were as much as anyone could hope for, and many marriages were desperately unhappy.
All but the most puritanical societies permitted men unwilling to suppress or sublimate their romantic and lustful urges to satisfy them extramaritally by taking mistresses or concubines. Women, however, were almost always discouraged from straying and punished severely if they were caught. Many went ahead and took the risk.
The unbreachable chasms of class and caste have also created mistresses who might otherwise have been wives. Saint Augustine, the 4th-century bishop of Hippo, subscribed to his North African society’s proscription against marrying below one’s class, and so he lived with the lower-ranked woman he loved as his concubine. When he decided to marry, his mother found a suitably well-born girl.
Caste determined by nationality, race or religion can also relegate women to the lower status of mistress. Xenophobic ancient Greece, for instance, forbade its citizens to marry foreigners, so the Athenian leader Pericles could never marry Aspasia, his beloved Miletian concubine and the mother of his son.
In many Eastern cultures, concubinage was integral rather than peripheral or parallel to marriage, and concubines’ duties and rights were spelled out in the law or in social custom. Concubines frequently lived in their master’s house, under the same roof with his wife and other concubines.
In modest homes, a concubine or two assisted the wife in her daily chores. Concubines were bound by wife-like sexual obligations, including fidelity, and confined to the same domestic sphere. There were excellent reasons for this. In sharp contrast to Western mistresses, one of the principal duties of most Eastern concubines was to bear their masters’ heirs.
In a few countries, notably imperial China and Turkey, some royals, aristocrats and men of privilege displayed their wealth and power by maintaining harems of concubines, often captured or purchased. Their crowded, eunuch-run harems were turbulent communities where intrigue, competition and conflict—to say nothing of children—proliferated. Older and less-favored harem concubines were drudges consigned to household labour.
Their still hopeful younger colleagues filled their empty days with meticulous grooming and plotting, with and against eunuchs, wives, relatives, children, servants and each other. Their goal was to spend a night with their harem’s owner and, if they were extraordinarily lucky, to conceive the child who could catapult his mother from obscurity into a life of privilege and perhaps even power.
In stark contrast, the laws of Western societies have almost always reinforced the primacy of marriage by bastardizing the offspring of mistresses, from the lowest-born slave to the highest-ranked duchess. Legally and culturally, fathers had no obligation to accept responsibility for their natural children and couldcondemn them to the ignominy and perils of illegitimacy. Indeed, the law often made it difficult, even for men so inclined, to recognize and provide for their “outside” children.
Yet some men defied their society’s strictures against supporting their illegitimate children. Royals such as England’s Charles II, who elevated so many of his mistresses’ sons to dukedoms that five of today’s twenty-six dukes are their descendants, assumed that their bloodlines were exalted enough to outweigh such niceties as legitimacy.
Commoners driven by personal passions also flouted their society’s values. A few slave owners, for example, risked serious reprisals from their profoundly racist compatriots by acknowledging paternity of a slave mistress’s children. In the Western world, however, acknowledging bastards has always been the exception to the rule.
Today’s mistress rightly expects better treatment for any child she might have with a lover. Like her precursors, she is the bellwether for female-male relations, and her status reflects how these relations have developed.
The improving condition of women, the liberalization of the laws governing families and personal relationships, and the growing acceptance of DNA tests have greatly increased the likelihood that her lover will recognize, or at least contribute to the support of, her child. (John Edwards is an egregious example of this.
After requesting an aide to pinch one of Frances Quinn’s diapers for a secret DNA test to determine whether or not he was her father, he systemically denied that he could be or was the father until, irreparably tarnished by a public trail of falsehoods, he admitted paternity and sought forgiveness, especially from Elizabeth, his furious wife.)
At the same time, the advent of accessible and reliable birth control and of legalized abortion has substantially diminished the number of those children a mistress is likely to have.
At the fag end of the book, the author deals with Concubinage.
Concubinage, in many respects a forerunner to mistressdom, developed as a derivative of marriage and of the almost universal tolerance of male infidelity. Possessing concubines permitted husbands to indulge themselves in sexual relationships that, though extramarital, were legally condoned and socially acceptable.
Men could flaunt these “other” women as symbols of prestige and of their wealth. They could also use them for wifelike domestic duties; indeed, concubines often worked alongside their lover-master’s wife, subject to her will.
Like Hagar the Egyptian, concubines were often slaves owned by either their lover or his wife. They had limited rights and security. As their societies evolved, most were granted the privilege of bearing their master’s children and providing him with heirs he could legitimize; the Japanese term “borrowed womb” is an elegant expression of this important function.
Concubinage also allowed unmarried men to enjoy intimate relationships with lower-ranked women their society deemed unsuitable to be their wives.
Like Pericles’ Aspasia and Saint Augustine’s Dolorosa, such a woman might be a wife in everything but name, sharing her lover’s life, living under his roof and bearing his children. Other concubines served as mere sexual outlets for men who showed them neither affection nor esteem.
In conclusion one agrees with the author when she observes that ‘Mistressdom remains an extension of marriage, a sanctioned outlet for male sexuality’.
Simultaneously, even the most liberated women who fall in love and consort with married men are often stimulated by the forbidden nature of their relationship, by its risks, their complicity in their lover’s adultery, their defiance of social niceties. Their love, legitimate in the sense that it is a real feeling, is heightened by its illegitimacy.
These days, too, the stakes are seldom as high as in the past. Today, a woman as well as a man may indulge in a passionate attraction for its own sake, as an erotic adventure and surrender to the senses, a delicious interval with a lover who is not, strictly speaking, available, and whom she usually shares with another woman.
Yet despite these liberated and liberating possibilities, too many mistresses still cast themselves in the ancient mold, with all its sacrifices and sadness, measuring themselves against the marital model, and finding themselves wanting.
I found the book intriguing and feisty. Grab a copy if you choose.
Author: Elizabeth Abbott
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (1 September 2011)
Language: English
Hardcover: 528 pages
Item Weight: 794 g
Dimensions: 16.46 x 4.39 x 24.03 cm
Price: 1575/-
In The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, a mistress is “a woman other than a wife with whom a man has a longstanding sexual relationship,” while a concubine is “a woman who cohabits with a man without being his wife.”
These classifications are too indistinguishable to of use, and the latter does not discriminate between a concubine and a common-law wife, nor does it clearly describe the Eastern concubine, who frequently but by no means always lives with her lover-master and his family.
Another problem is that in the Western world, the words ‘mistress’ and ‘concubine’ are often used synonymously. The author uses a working definition of mistress as, “a woman voluntarily or forcibly engaged in a relatively long-term sexual relationship with a man who is usually married to another woman.”
This definition applies to concubines as well, whose particularities are further discussed in the chapters devoted to their cultures.
Mistressdom is universally linked with marriage, human society’s most essential institution, and almost mechanically implies marital disloyalty, sometimes by the husband, sometimes by the wife.
Indeed, marriage is a key element in determining who is a mistress and who is not.
Though many people assume that falseness dents marriage, many others believe that, ironically, it shores marriage up.
Frenchmen, for example, can justify the cinq à sept, the after-office-hours assignation a man enjoys with his mistress, by quoting French writer Alexandre Dumas’s pithy observation: “The chains of marriage are so heavy that it often takes two people to carry them, and sometimes three.”
In all societies and at all times, the custom of arranged marriages has been most likely to produce mistressdom and concubinage because parents or other relatives selected their children’s spouses for economic reasons or to cement family, business or political alliances and usually dismissed romantic love as an irrelevant, self-indulgent and sometimes even treacherous foundation for a marital relationship.
Husbands and wives were expected to cohabit and operate as an economic unit, and to produce and raise children. They were not expected to quiver at each other’s touch, to adore one another or to fulfil each other’s emotional needs.
This nearly 600 page tome has been divided into thirteen broad chapters:
CHAPTER 1 - Love out of Wedlock in the Ancient World
CHAPTER 2 - Eastern Concubines and Harems
CHAPTER 3 - Whose Whore? Europe’s Royal Mistresses
CHAPTER 4 - Marital Arrangements in Aristocratic Circles
CHAPTER 5 - The Clandestine Consorts of (Un) Celibate Clerics
CHAPTER 6 – Conquerors and Their Mistresses
CHAPTER 7 - Interracial Sexual Unions Within the “Peculiar Institution”
CHAPTER 8 - Sexual Unions and the Jewish Question
CHAPTER 9 - Mistresses as Muses
CHAPTER 10 - Mistresses of Men Above the Law
CHAPTER 11 - Mistresses as Trophy Dolls
CHAPTER 12 - Fallen Women: Mistresses in Literature
CHAPTER 13 - The 1960s Transform Marriage and Mistressdom
While studying the history of mistresses through time, one observes that sometimes romantic love developed after the fact but more often, regard, tolerance and resignation were as much as anyone could hope for, and many marriages were desperately unhappy.
All but the most puritanical societies permitted men unwilling to suppress or sublimate their romantic and lustful urges to satisfy them extramaritally by taking mistresses or concubines. Women, however, were almost always discouraged from straying and punished severely if they were caught. Many went ahead and took the risk.
The unbreachable chasms of class and caste have also created mistresses who might otherwise have been wives. Saint Augustine, the 4th-century bishop of Hippo, subscribed to his North African society’s proscription against marrying below one’s class, and so he lived with the lower-ranked woman he loved as his concubine. When he decided to marry, his mother found a suitably well-born girl.
Caste determined by nationality, race or religion can also relegate women to the lower status of mistress. Xenophobic ancient Greece, for instance, forbade its citizens to marry foreigners, so the Athenian leader Pericles could never marry Aspasia, his beloved Miletian concubine and the mother of his son.
In many Eastern cultures, concubinage was integral rather than peripheral or parallel to marriage, and concubines’ duties and rights were spelled out in the law or in social custom. Concubines frequently lived in their master’s house, under the same roof with his wife and other concubines.
In modest homes, a concubine or two assisted the wife in her daily chores. Concubines were bound by wife-like sexual obligations, including fidelity, and confined to the same domestic sphere. There were excellent reasons for this. In sharp contrast to Western mistresses, one of the principal duties of most Eastern concubines was to bear their masters’ heirs.
In a few countries, notably imperial China and Turkey, some royals, aristocrats and men of privilege displayed their wealth and power by maintaining harems of concubines, often captured or purchased. Their crowded, eunuch-run harems were turbulent communities where intrigue, competition and conflict—to say nothing of children—proliferated. Older and less-favored harem concubines were drudges consigned to household labour.
Their still hopeful younger colleagues filled their empty days with meticulous grooming and plotting, with and against eunuchs, wives, relatives, children, servants and each other. Their goal was to spend a night with their harem’s owner and, if they were extraordinarily lucky, to conceive the child who could catapult his mother from obscurity into a life of privilege and perhaps even power.
In stark contrast, the laws of Western societies have almost always reinforced the primacy of marriage by bastardizing the offspring of mistresses, from the lowest-born slave to the highest-ranked duchess. Legally and culturally, fathers had no obligation to accept responsibility for their natural children and couldcondemn them to the ignominy and perils of illegitimacy. Indeed, the law often made it difficult, even for men so inclined, to recognize and provide for their “outside” children.
Yet some men defied their society’s strictures against supporting their illegitimate children. Royals such as England’s Charles II, who elevated so many of his mistresses’ sons to dukedoms that five of today’s twenty-six dukes are their descendants, assumed that their bloodlines were exalted enough to outweigh such niceties as legitimacy.
Commoners driven by personal passions also flouted their society’s values. A few slave owners, for example, risked serious reprisals from their profoundly racist compatriots by acknowledging paternity of a slave mistress’s children. In the Western world, however, acknowledging bastards has always been the exception to the rule.
Today’s mistress rightly expects better treatment for any child she might have with a lover. Like her precursors, she is the bellwether for female-male relations, and her status reflects how these relations have developed.
The improving condition of women, the liberalization of the laws governing families and personal relationships, and the growing acceptance of DNA tests have greatly increased the likelihood that her lover will recognize, or at least contribute to the support of, her child. (John Edwards is an egregious example of this.
After requesting an aide to pinch one of Frances Quinn’s diapers for a secret DNA test to determine whether or not he was her father, he systemically denied that he could be or was the father until, irreparably tarnished by a public trail of falsehoods, he admitted paternity and sought forgiveness, especially from Elizabeth, his furious wife.)
At the same time, the advent of accessible and reliable birth control and of legalized abortion has substantially diminished the number of those children a mistress is likely to have.
At the fag end of the book, the author deals with Concubinage.
Concubinage, in many respects a forerunner to mistressdom, developed as a derivative of marriage and of the almost universal tolerance of male infidelity. Possessing concubines permitted husbands to indulge themselves in sexual relationships that, though extramarital, were legally condoned and socially acceptable.
Men could flaunt these “other” women as symbols of prestige and of their wealth. They could also use them for wifelike domestic duties; indeed, concubines often worked alongside their lover-master’s wife, subject to her will.
Like Hagar the Egyptian, concubines were often slaves owned by either their lover or his wife. They had limited rights and security. As their societies evolved, most were granted the privilege of bearing their master’s children and providing him with heirs he could legitimize; the Japanese term “borrowed womb” is an elegant expression of this important function.
Concubinage also allowed unmarried men to enjoy intimate relationships with lower-ranked women their society deemed unsuitable to be their wives.
Like Pericles’ Aspasia and Saint Augustine’s Dolorosa, such a woman might be a wife in everything but name, sharing her lover’s life, living under his roof and bearing his children. Other concubines served as mere sexual outlets for men who showed them neither affection nor esteem.
In conclusion one agrees with the author when she observes that ‘Mistressdom remains an extension of marriage, a sanctioned outlet for male sexuality’.
Simultaneously, even the most liberated women who fall in love and consort with married men are often stimulated by the forbidden nature of their relationship, by its risks, their complicity in their lover’s adultery, their defiance of social niceties. Their love, legitimate in the sense that it is a real feeling, is heightened by its illegitimacy.
These days, too, the stakes are seldom as high as in the past. Today, a woman as well as a man may indulge in a passionate attraction for its own sake, as an erotic adventure and surrender to the senses, a delicious interval with a lover who is not, strictly speaking, available, and whom she usually shares with another woman.
Yet despite these liberated and liberating possibilities, too many mistresses still cast themselves in the ancient mold, with all its sacrifices and sadness, measuring themselves against the marital model, and finding themselves wanting.
I found the book intriguing and feisty. Grab a copy if you choose.
August 13, 2014
I loved this book a lot and I would give it five stars were it not for the few mistakes and constant myths and racial stereotypes I will go to at the end of my review. The history of the other woman tells the stories of women that are rarely heard of or condemned, I love how she focused on all societal aspects and also focused on the present where the double standard still exists, and women are always the first ones condemned.
My only complaint was how colonial women and especially Mesoamerican women were portrayed in this. The use of very little colonial or Mesoamerican women, I can understand given that not many people are interested in this history, it's complicated and unless you have a deep interest in pre-colonial and colonial history you are not going to go anywhere beyond the basics and that includes stereotypes. Malitzin was *not* called Malinche. A lot of Mexicans today believe she was (incorrectly), several authors like Mexican historian Ignacio Taibo have pointed out that this was a term used for Cortex. "El Malinche" not "La Malinche", second the author constantly emphasized of carnivore gods, how she preferred her lover's gentility and charity, his religion which preached of love over vengeful gods like the savage society she inhabited. If the author read on several books on the subject such as sources other than Spanish about the conquest, or a class on pre-colonial art, she would have known that these so called "cannibalistic" gods were no more cannibals than the Christian god (who sent his own son to die and the communion itself can be argued from a philosophical standpoint is cannibalistic because the bread and wine signify the body and blood of Christ). Also the tale of how Malitzin was told by this aristocratic native woman that she and her people were ready to make a stew of Spaniards and would sacrifice them to appease their gods and their priests would also consume their flesh had me laughing and rolling my eyes. Also she conveniently forgot that besides Malitzin, there was another woman who suffered immensely (if not more, since she was raped and later forgotten by Cortez just like he forgot Malitzin) and this was the daughter of the late Aztec Emperor Moctezuma (II) Xoyocotzin -Isabel Moctezuma. Isabel of course is her Christian name, she was raped, had a daughter by Cortez that for obvious reasons she repudiated and later as Malitzin was forced to marry one of the Europeans. And last but not least, Moctezuma is depicted as a treacherous, backstabbing emperor who was plotting an ambush against the Spaniards -this is one of the many theories that have circulated, however there is another one more plausible and it explains his 'sudden' death. Moctezuma was an ineffectual leader, the elite were the one planning an ambush against the Spaniards, when this was discovered, the Spaniards captured the emperor and intended to use him as their puppet then they were expelled and Moctezuma was later found dead. The suspects are either the elite or the Spaniards, take your pick. The way Native people and their customs are described seem to be taken from basic books and it keeps perpetuating the stereotype of the cannibalistic savage (in Mesoamerican people's case) or noble savage (in Pocahontas or should I say Makaota's case). These indigenous women were much victims of their society as they were of the Europeans, and I agree that there is a lot of ignorance regarding these figures and they easily get blamed for the crimes their lovers and Europeans did (it is something I struggle to emphasize when I hear people condemning Malitzin and calling her a sell out, I always point out that she wasn't and she was a slave, what was she supposed to do? She was a survavilist and to her, Cortez and his men were her only way out. She suffered more after the conquest when Cortez showed his true colors and abandoned her and the man he married her to was no shining knight either); but in no way is portraying Native culture as savage or superstitious a way to pay them any homage, it does a disservice to the other women who also suffered as they did under the yoke of the Europeans.
My only complaint was how colonial women and especially Mesoamerican women were portrayed in this. The use of very little colonial or Mesoamerican women, I can understand given that not many people are interested in this history, it's complicated and unless you have a deep interest in pre-colonial and colonial history you are not going to go anywhere beyond the basics and that includes stereotypes. Malitzin was *not* called Malinche. A lot of Mexicans today believe she was (incorrectly), several authors like Mexican historian Ignacio Taibo have pointed out that this was a term used for Cortex. "El Malinche" not "La Malinche", second the author constantly emphasized of carnivore gods, how she preferred her lover's gentility and charity, his religion which preached of love over vengeful gods like the savage society she inhabited. If the author read on several books on the subject such as sources other than Spanish about the conquest, or a class on pre-colonial art, she would have known that these so called "cannibalistic" gods were no more cannibals than the Christian god (who sent his own son to die and the communion itself can be argued from a philosophical standpoint is cannibalistic because the bread and wine signify the body and blood of Christ). Also the tale of how Malitzin was told by this aristocratic native woman that she and her people were ready to make a stew of Spaniards and would sacrifice them to appease their gods and their priests would also consume their flesh had me laughing and rolling my eyes. Also she conveniently forgot that besides Malitzin, there was another woman who suffered immensely (if not more, since she was raped and later forgotten by Cortez just like he forgot Malitzin) and this was the daughter of the late Aztec Emperor Moctezuma (II) Xoyocotzin -Isabel Moctezuma. Isabel of course is her Christian name, she was raped, had a daughter by Cortez that for obvious reasons she repudiated and later as Malitzin was forced to marry one of the Europeans. And last but not least, Moctezuma is depicted as a treacherous, backstabbing emperor who was plotting an ambush against the Spaniards -this is one of the many theories that have circulated, however there is another one more plausible and it explains his 'sudden' death. Moctezuma was an ineffectual leader, the elite were the one planning an ambush against the Spaniards, when this was discovered, the Spaniards captured the emperor and intended to use him as their puppet then they were expelled and Moctezuma was later found dead. The suspects are either the elite or the Spaniards, take your pick. The way Native people and their customs are described seem to be taken from basic books and it keeps perpetuating the stereotype of the cannibalistic savage (in Mesoamerican people's case) or noble savage (in Pocahontas or should I say Makaota's case). These indigenous women were much victims of their society as they were of the Europeans, and I agree that there is a lot of ignorance regarding these figures and they easily get blamed for the crimes their lovers and Europeans did (it is something I struggle to emphasize when I hear people condemning Malitzin and calling her a sell out, I always point out that she wasn't and she was a slave, what was she supposed to do? She was a survavilist and to her, Cortez and his men were her only way out. She suffered more after the conquest when Cortez showed his true colors and abandoned her and the man he married her to was no shining knight either); but in no way is portraying Native culture as savage or superstitious a way to pay them any homage, it does a disservice to the other women who also suffered as they did under the yoke of the Europeans.
June 5, 2018
This was an ok book. Nothing particularly exciting. It reads as a giant listicle of all the who's who of mistresses in history. There are stories that come off genuinely romantic and others that made me cringe. Some mistresses rose to unseen heights of fame and others were left behind by her lover (or lovers in some cases) to rot.
Abbott does offer some reflection into the world of mistresses but her book stops frustratingly short of being truly interesting or insightful. She also includes some dubious examples such as an entire chapter of famous fictional women and a few modern women's experiences that appear to be acquaintances of hers.
Is it a bad book? No. Is it a good book? I wouldn't say that either.
Abbott does offer some reflection into the world of mistresses but her book stops frustratingly short of being truly interesting or insightful. She also includes some dubious examples such as an entire chapter of famous fictional women and a few modern women's experiences that appear to be acquaintances of hers.
Is it a bad book? No. Is it a good book? I wouldn't say that either.
October 5, 2012
A look at mistresses through history and the changing social mores regarding women's roles in society and sex. The little vignettes regarding the various mistresses provided a taste of their lives and made me want to read more on some of them. However, as she mistakenly attributes the famous quote 'Publish and be damned' to Admiral Nelson when it was actually the Duke of Wellington who said it, it does make you wonder what other historical facts she got wrong.
March 23, 2015
I was rather roping for more of an exploration of the gender and sexual politics that go into the affairs that create mistresses. There was probably about ten pages of that, and 450 of--admittedly, very well-researched--biographies of famous and not-so-famous mistresses in history. I may now reconsider my previous interest in her other titles, A History of Celibacy and A History of Marriage.
December 5, 2023
I made it halfway through and largely skipped chapter 7. So many stories of “relationships” built on a power imbalance, particularly in chapter 7 where these women’s stores were told by the white men who enslaved them. I just couldn’t read any more. Maybe cut this down by half and be more thoughtful about how we talk about women, physical features, and power imbalance. 🤷♀️
December 19, 2025
DNF.
I was excited about this book and enjoying it until I hit the section on Hurrem, an Ottoman empire concubine, which was made up of almost entirely inaccurate information. Even taking into account when this book was written and what information was readily available about Hurrem herself at that time the information about how the Ottoman empire functioned that the book contained was inaccurate.
This made me question whether the information in the rest of the book was just as inaccurate and ultimately, spoiled my enjoyment and desire to keep reading.
I was excited about this book and enjoying it until I hit the section on Hurrem, an Ottoman empire concubine, which was made up of almost entirely inaccurate information. Even taking into account when this book was written and what information was readily available about Hurrem herself at that time the information about how the Ottoman empire functioned that the book contained was inaccurate.
This made me question whether the information in the rest of the book was just as inaccurate and ultimately, spoiled my enjoyment and desire to keep reading.
August 31, 2025
A fascinating in-depth analysis of the role of mistresses throughout history, culture and religion. Abbotts discussion of examples of mistresses from all time periods and backgrounds provides a biographical narrative structure that engages, enlightens and intrigues.
March 23, 2025
"it is depressingly remarkable how the experiences of so many modern mistresses resemble those of mistresses past"
January 27, 2018
I have just finished this fascinating book, Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman by Elizabeth Abbott. First published in 2003, this book provides carefully researched and well-thought through accounts of the other woman through history. There are thirteen chapters excluding the introduction and conclusion by the author. Abbott was mindful to remind us that two mistresses she is acquainted with and mentioned in her book had their names and their partners changed and had used aliases instead.
Of the mistresses mentioned in this book, personalities we might be familiar with include:
Nell Gwynne (long-time mistress of King Charles II of England) who had Charles II imploring his brother James to “Let not poor Nelly starve”;
Camilla Parker-Bowles (now Duchess of Cornwall and second wife of Charles, Prince of Wales);
Marilyn Monroe (American actress, model, and singer);
Lady Bess Foster (best friend of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire and their story made into a British drama film The Duchess in 2008);
Simone de Beauvoir (French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist).
Least you think the book is about celebrity mistresses, there are entire chapters devoted to eastern concubines, clandestine consorts of clerics, conquerors and their mistresses, mistress of men above the law (think mobsters) and even mistresses who were not even alive (fallen women in literature). Abbott explains that concubinage is in many respects a precursor to mistressdom, developed as an offshoot fo marriage and of the almost universal tolerance of male infidelity. The “other women” were flaunted as symbols of pretige and wealth and sometimes used to provide heirs he could legitimize.
This book was an eye-opener for me because I live in a time where “feminism and egalitarianism, the sexual revolution and the Pill, and changing mores and standards, notably the elevation of romantic love to an ideal, have stamped marriage” irrevocable (in the author’s words). We tend to judge mistresses and cannot comprehend why there are women who choose mistressdom over marriage. These are women who make choices out of passion, economic self-sufficiency or personal autonomy. Mistressdom still prevails and the first step to understanding more (and the different facets of life), to judge not (or judge less), is to perhaps to read this book. If this is not appealing to you i.e. learning to become a better person, this is still a page-turner for the stories of women from long ago – who have lived, loved and dared. It will certainly transport you to a differnt era where you will imagine and wonder what it was like.
You can find the book here.
Reviews
‘It is not just mistresses, it seems, who need to wake up to the new millennium; one of the surprises of this engrossing book is how mired in myth and fantasy it reveals our attitude to mistresses as being.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘a fascinating account of the other woman through history, more sobering than titillating.’ Sunday Times
Of the mistresses mentioned in this book, personalities we might be familiar with include:
Nell Gwynne (long-time mistress of King Charles II of England) who had Charles II imploring his brother James to “Let not poor Nelly starve”;
Camilla Parker-Bowles (now Duchess of Cornwall and second wife of Charles, Prince of Wales);
Marilyn Monroe (American actress, model, and singer);
Lady Bess Foster (best friend of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire and their story made into a British drama film The Duchess in 2008);
Simone de Beauvoir (French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist).
Least you think the book is about celebrity mistresses, there are entire chapters devoted to eastern concubines, clandestine consorts of clerics, conquerors and their mistresses, mistress of men above the law (think mobsters) and even mistresses who were not even alive (fallen women in literature). Abbott explains that concubinage is in many respects a precursor to mistressdom, developed as an offshoot fo marriage and of the almost universal tolerance of male infidelity. The “other women” were flaunted as symbols of pretige and wealth and sometimes used to provide heirs he could legitimize.
This book was an eye-opener for me because I live in a time where “feminism and egalitarianism, the sexual revolution and the Pill, and changing mores and standards, notably the elevation of romantic love to an ideal, have stamped marriage” irrevocable (in the author’s words). We tend to judge mistresses and cannot comprehend why there are women who choose mistressdom over marriage. These are women who make choices out of passion, economic self-sufficiency or personal autonomy. Mistressdom still prevails and the first step to understanding more (and the different facets of life), to judge not (or judge less), is to perhaps to read this book. If this is not appealing to you i.e. learning to become a better person, this is still a page-turner for the stories of women from long ago – who have lived, loved and dared. It will certainly transport you to a differnt era where you will imagine and wonder what it was like.
You can find the book here.
Reviews
‘It is not just mistresses, it seems, who need to wake up to the new millennium; one of the surprises of this engrossing book is how mired in myth and fantasy it reveals our attitude to mistresses as being.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘a fascinating account of the other woman through history, more sobering than titillating.’ Sunday Times
April 7, 2012
This is a scholarly approach to mistresses by a historian. It is organized with chapters organized historically (ancient times, 1960s), by social strata (royal mistresses, aristocracy, clerics, conquerors of the new world, artists, and outlaws) as well as a couple of chapters about mistresses across racial and ethnic divisions.
The summary of each mistress is presented in a couple of pages with some background about the men involved as well. As would be expected in a scholarly work, there are lots of references and it is well indexed.
The author is generally sympathetic to the mistresses, trying to provide some context for the choices that they made, or could not make, within the society that they lived. Very few of the women portrayed had access to independent wealth, power or education.
A very interesting read.
The summary of each mistress is presented in a couple of pages with some background about the men involved as well. As would be expected in a scholarly work, there are lots of references and it is well indexed.
The author is generally sympathetic to the mistresses, trying to provide some context for the choices that they made, or could not make, within the society that they lived. Very few of the women portrayed had access to independent wealth, power or education.
A very interesting read.
January 27, 2013
Mistresses is an exploration of what the women in longterm relationships with men who aren't married to them have been like, and for the most part it sucks. Not the book, the relationships:) I found Mistresses to be very readable. A helpful thing considering it's innately depressing topic. I left this book being more grateful then ever before that I never went down that path. Despite being interesting two things really bothered me. The first was that I felt that some of the data was being presented as solid facts when it really wasn't that concrete. The other was Abbott's intensive moralizing. It wasn't too bad in the historical segments but when it comes to the modern day versions it was intense. And really, was every wife who resented her mistress counterpart at fault for the demise of her marriage and the reason her husband just had to stray?
Currently reading
February 24, 2012The writing so far is both academically professional and captivating. The author takes a sincerely interesting look at this group of women through history, and in literature. The book cover artwork, though seen from my pov as quite beautiful, can easily misconstrue the real material of the text...and makes the book look far more sexed up than it is.
August 2, 2023
A book of mostly heart breaking stories of women who suffered mistressdom or concubinage in the patriarchal communities. However, the modern mistresses fuel men’s perspective of women which causes harassments and abuses in the world. In my opinion, whoever becomes mistress (when one is financially independent) or whoever takes mistresses are anti-feminists.
February 1, 2013
Too scholarly to be fun, but too slanted and flawed to be authoritative. It was enormous. And not fun enough to finish. And she left out Emma Hamilton but included Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, who are fictional?
Read
January 8, 2017after you get past the fact that she's not really the other woman (and the fact that I look just like the girl on the cover) ... not really amusing finding it on the shelf at my local Calabasas Barnes and Noble ... it was interesting ...
April 16, 2022
A history of the "other woman". These examples cover a wide range of situations. From women who are enslaved or who prefer partnership to marriage. As Ms. Abbott has also written about marriage, many of these relationships came about due to the legal and religious requirements of that institution.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 2, 2012
This is absolutely delicious!
I was wandering through my university book store, killing time before, my job interview and found this little gem.
I was wandering through my university book store, killing time before, my job interview and found this little gem.
February 28, 2012
Very interesting insight into the back story of some of the most famous relationships. However, they are linked together like separate research reports rather than a cohesive story.
May 24, 2019
Loved this book! Learned a lot about a part of women's history that is never talked about. Was well worth the time spent reading this book!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 5, 2013
A bit too much info, I wish that the stories flowed into each other.
March 27, 2014
A little too much info, like reading a text book. I want the info but with a spice of fun.
June 18, 2014
Very interesting, if somewhat depressing, read.
June 10, 2014
This is a series of vignettes grouped by theme rather than an overarching narrative.
My biggest problem reading through this was the size of the type - it's remarkably tiny for such a lengthy read.
My biggest problem reading through this was the size of the type - it's remarkably tiny for such a lengthy read.
June 18, 2015
Really accessible case studies of famous mistresses and their fates. It is a bit simplistic in parts and there is a fair amount of conjecture.Nevertheless, a good read.
May 26, 2018
3.5 stars
August 19, 2020
A well-researched book, and a wonderful read- Not just from a historic viewpoint, but on how people make or break relationships.
January 1, 2021
Interesting read. Fun amd informative art the same time.
February 5, 2021
ended up picking and choosing which ones to read about, a good jumping off point for discovering new women
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