![]() ![]() Indeed, marriage is a key element in determining who is a mistress and who is not. ![]() ![]() 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. This definition applies to concubines as well, whose particularities are further discussed in the chapters devoted to their cultures. 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.” 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.Īnother problem is that in the Western world, the words ‘mistress’ and ‘concubine’ are often used synonymously. ![]() 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.” Book: Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman ![]()
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