She does currently have 1 point of spoiling, though I can't recall how she earned it. Possibly from having her on fresh food for so long without earning it, but it was necessary to keep her mood up while maintaining 3 rules.
She will be less spoiled if she is quite fearful or desperate (or devoted but that's impossible at an early game).
Unfortunately I have no ability to "put her in her place" to deal with it because it has no impact on her in the current state of things. And I'm reluctant to go adding more points to how spoiled she is because I feel like that will only make things even harder on me. I guess I could give it a shot and see if it changes anything.
Since you are playing the extreme difficulty, so we can ignore the effect of your aura in terms of threatening and training taming. The "put in place" needs her some impressive punishment memories, so don't be afraid to punish her, especially using painful and shameful ones, her fighting you is always unavoidable, so a lash or whip will be helpful.
That said she is never, absolutely never above optimistic no matter what I try to do. She can already be optimistic while being filthy and in a dirty house, and I can take her to the spa and get the place cleaned but she will stay maxed at optimistic.
Different kinds of rewards give her different good moodlets, all of which have a boost on her mood. A positive mood keeps her away from despair, but her performance and diligence is affected by mood as well in extreme difficulty.
She'll often complete her studies with between a b+ and s+ performance, but it usually only warrants a 1 and rarely 2 reward, though I haven't had a chance to give a 2 reward in a long time.
See last reply, and if you think it necessary, overreward her sometimes can be helpful too, at a tiny cost of awareness and spoiling.
For example, I always love to reward a new slave with warm plaid to reduce her despair gradually, or a toy to recover her a little more energy, the spoiling resulting from it is easy to handle.
The best I've been able to manage aura wise so far is equal to hers, unless I fight her which elevates mine above hers, but again comes with the hefty price tag to heal and costs me all the progress I made on my strength forcing me to start that over again. Most of the time hers is above mine, but there are times when it says mine is equal to hers. I suppose I should look into this spell and see what I can do with it. That's one area of the game I don't really understand enough yet to play with so I've kind of been ignoring it. Maybe that's my problem and I need to be using the spells.
Let me guess what the major problem was, in extreme difficulty, it is always difficult to train obedience of the first slave, awareness, habit and 3- fearness can be easily achieved, while taming and higher fearness are difficult in comparison, because of your low aura, and these two matter a lot in her obedience.
Higher Fearness: fearness is always stuck at 3, threatening doesn't work, using higher intensity of punishment will face rebelling, if you think it necessary, try overpunishing her for a higher fearness level, at a small cost of awareness and despair.
Taming: taming is gradually increased if your aura is stronger than hers, and on the contray, if you are weaker, her taming gradually decreases. Painful and shameful gears and punishments will help to train her taming, it may as well be the key to her obedience.
And lastly, if you've done those above all, and she still refuses to do some trainings. It finally comes to the last factor, devotion, in a hard start, all you can do is raise her mood, train her and reward her properly, then WAIT for the devotion to rise.
So first of all, I'm playing on extreme which I know is my own damn fault. haha. I'm not complaining that the game is too hard or anything like that. I realize that there's something I'm missing and I'm just trying to figure out what it is. 
