Enacting Mistress and Steward Roles in a Letter of Household Management: Bess of Hardwick to Francis Whitfield, 14 November 1552

Bess of Hardwicks popular reputation has been largely shaped by biographers and antiquarians who did not all have full access to her letters and other household documents in the manuscript originals and who were not equipped to interpret her epistolary language in its sociohistorical context. This article reassesses Besss reputation by examining the range of rhetorical techniques she uses to express to a steward at Chatsworth her pleasure and displeasure and thus to perform her authoritative role as mistress in one of her most notorious letters. Along the way, it explains the cultural assumptions about employer-servant relations and communication that underlie the letter; highlights how Bess represents the stewards duties and urges him to fulfil his own role in the household; argues that her half-sister Jane, the subject of much of the letter, had a somewhat different role at Chatsworth than has been traditionally ascribed to her; and, through material readings of the letter and related texts, reveals the importance of several family servants in both running the household and shaping Besss reception there and thereafter.