History
Cult of True Womanhood
The "Cult of True Womanhood" refers to a 19th-century ideal of womanhood that emphasized piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. This concept, also known as the "cult of domesticity," prescribed strict gender roles for women, defining their worth in terms of their roles as wives and mothers. It was influential in shaping societal expectations and norms for women during this period.
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9 Key excerpts on "Cult of True Womanhood"
eBook - ePubFrom Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World Volume III
Infernos and Paradises: The Triumph of Capitalism in the 19th Century
- Marilyn French(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- The Feminist Press at CUNY(Publisher)
CHAPTER 4 MIDDLE-CLASS WOMEN IN ENGLAND A NEW GENDER IDEOLOGY PERVADED the English-speaking world in the mid-nineteenth century. As ideas of rights and social justice spread more widely, ideas about women narrowed. In this period, women lost property rights; they also lost legal identity at marriage and were forced into domestic roles as tight as their corsets. The Cult of Domesticity (or Cult of True Womanhood or Doctrine of Separate Spheres), which was central to nineteenth-century middle-class thinking about gender, slowly filtered down to the working class. It was an unattainable ideal for black Americans: an area of failure for black men who could not support women as the ideal required and for black women, who, even if supported, could never be “ladies.” While many today scorn the image of a pious, sexually pure, submissive, domestic woman as false or constricting, it remains powerful in many media. The ideal was invested not just with moral superiority, but with glamor : the “lady,” with her upswept hair, high-buttoned blouse, tiny waist, flowing skirt, bent neck, and sweet smile, sat on a velvet couch, protected from the harshness of life, an icon to be desired and emulated. Revolutionary changes in printing made possible national distribution of magazines, the first mass medium. Magazines (often edited by women) and books like Catherine Beecher’s Domestic Economy and Godey’s Ladies’ Book by Sarah Josepha Hale became the purveyors of woman’s new image. It was still purveyed in the 1950s via Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, Woman’s Day, and romance novels. In this myth, a standard against which real women were measured, Woman was the pivotal figure in a morality upheld by religion, law, and science. Her function was to stand still yet do what was necessary for men to devote their energies to aggressive, acquisitive competition. Woman’s moral excellence exemplified virtue; without it, men claimed, society would fall into viciousness
eBook - PDFA New Type of Womanhood
Discursive Politics and Social Change in Antebellum America
- Natasha Kirsten Kraus, Natasha Kirsten Kraus(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Duke University Press Books(Publisher)
But language, in this case expressing the 12 Part i doctrine of separate spheres and domesticity, does not just respond to material reality, but is inextricably entangled and interwoven with it. How humans conceive of themselves and their world shapes material reality as socioeconomic forces shape their conceptions. Women’s moral existence in the domestic realm did not simply stave off the brutalities of the capitalist market. For an unsettled people, it signified the continued existence of so-cial order in precarious socioeconomic times, allowing them the sense of social stability necessary to get through the next day. Women’s discursive residence in the domestic sphere provided a last and important attachment to an earlier and much more stable social order, during a transition from agrarian domestic production to urban market reliance. And women’s civic role in associations upheld and sustained True Womanhood, providing com-munal expressions of societal order by invoking the common values Woman-hood signified. The popular discourse of True Womanhood moored men and women alike. As a set of meanings and relations through which women and men conceived of women’s existence in the social world, it was a powerful force shaping material reality, just as it is an insufficient measure of what daily life and practice actually looked like. True Womanhood was also a concept sub-ject to change. Its social meanings were embedded in the contingencies of its own historical emergence and in its play with other contemporary con-cepts, such as contract, property, the economy, and the nation, which them-selves were historically and discursively embedded.
eBook - ePubForging the Male Spirit
The Spiritual Lives of American College Men
- Longwood, Schipper(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wipf and Stock(Publisher)
Whereas women in classical Christianity had been regarded as “carnal” in contrast to men who represented spirituality and rationality, now women—especially white, economically privileged women—came to be identified as more religious, more spiritual, more moral than men, though they continued to be viewed as irrational and emotional. The nineteenth-century Victorians privatized the spiritual realm as they placed women on a spiritual pedestal, shifting an earlier understanding of patriarchal dualism that had assumed men to be superior in spirit and reason while women were identified with the inferior aspects of body and emotion. 2 In the Victorian ideal, which found expression as “The Cult of True Womanhood” or “the cult of domesticity,” “True Womanhood” incorporated four cardinal virtues—piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity—and religion or piety was the core of a woman’s virtue and the source of her strength. 3 As a result, the church—particularly the Protestant church—in the nineteenth century became a feminine preserve, and clergymen of that era increasingly bemoaned that their congregations were composed of a great disproportion of females. Howard Allen Bridgeman, a liberal Congregationalist, for example, writing in the Andover Review in 1890, posed the question dramatically: “Have We a Religion for Men?” Noting that “the women naturally gravitate to the prayer-meeting, and men as naturally to the penitentiary,” he expressed his dismay that the gospel he preached appeared “limited by sex distinctions.” 4 From the perspective of “real men” in the world of power and business, the appropriate role of the church was to serve the powerless—women and children—and they regarded the clergy with the perplexed contempt that a masculinist ethic reserves for the feminine
eBook - ePubGender Roles and the People of God
Rethinking What We Were Taught about Men and Women in the Church
- Alice Mathews(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Zondervan(Publisher)
From John R. Rice to Andreas Köstenberger and Tom Schreiner, these writers moved from harsh to conciliatory in tone and increasing efforts at solid research, but in the end, the conclusion is still the same: important gender distinctions are biblical and must be maintained by means of a doctrine of separate spheres. The recycling of the Cult of True Womanhood has produced appealing arguments for this doctrine, but in the end, patriarchy is still alive and well in these circles.Questions for Personal Reflection or Group Discussion1. How did the doctrine of separate spheres help men in their shift from early markers of masculinity to those appropriate to their lives in nineteenth-century businesses? 2. In what ways did the Cult of True Womanhood backfire as a means of shoring up the doctrine of separate spheres? 3. What were some of the advantages of newly available advanced education for women at the end of the nineteenth century? 4. What (if anything) do you see in today’s world that attempts to reproduce the doctrine of separate spheres or the Cult of True Womanhood?1 .See Betty A. DeBerg, Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 15–16.2 .Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 109.3 .M. M’Gee, in the Weekly Recorder 80.35 (July 6, 1905); quoted by DeBerg, Ungodly Women, 44.4 .Stephanie Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families 1600–1900 (New York: Verso, 1988), 210.5 .Quoted in Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England 1780–1835 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 68.6 .See Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio State University Press, 1976), 21–41.7 .Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: Free Press, 1989), 139.8 .From The Young Lady’s Class Book, ed. Ebenezer Bailey, 1831; cited in Welter, Dimity Convictions, 22.9 .See Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Avon, 1977), 18–19.10 . Ibid., 85.11 . Ibid., 88.12 .In contrast to more “theological” hymns in an earlier period, typical of nineteenth-century hymnody were Joseph Scriven’s (1820–1886) “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” Louise M. R. Stead’s (1850–1917) “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” Henry Francis Lyte’s (1793–1847) “Abide with Me,” and Carolina Sandell Berg’s (1832–1903) “Children of the Heavenly Father.”
- Martin Pugh(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
She placed much of the blame for elevating domesticity as the highest form of fulfilment for a woman upon the women’s magazines of the 1940s and 1950s in America. However, if this reached a climax after the Second World War it was very clearly a marked feature throughout the post-1918 period. But it would be anachronis-tic to portray British women between the wars simply as passive victims of the prevailing ideology as Friedan did. The cult of domesticity has to be seen in a context in which women were showing great determination, in the face of dis-approval from most male, political, religious and commercial pressures, to have fewer children. The smaller family was all of a piece with the domestic ideology in that it, too, was a way of raising the standard provided by the wife for her family. Moreover the oral evidence shows how much women took pride in their skills as housewives. Their strategies changed a little in this period; they made less use of the pawnbroker and more of the Co-op; with fewer children they had THE CULT OF DOMESTICITY IN THE 1930S 183 less washing to do but more and better clothes per head; their meals might be more varied and adventurous; their family might wash more frequently. This was all part of an improving life style in which they themselves had a central role to play. Many younger women, who had seen the near impossibility for their moth-ers of having a clean, attractive and comfortable home, in spite of their efforts, could now see the ideal being realised in part in their own homes; the hard time-consuming work remained virtually unchanged, but the greater reward increased their self-respect as managerial figures. Marriage: the ‘best job of all’? The traditional imbalance between the sexes in British society had long meant that marriage was denied to large numbers of women however much it was regarded as the only proper calling. At first sight one might suppose that this situ-ation continued after 1914.
eBook - PDFEarly Republic
People and Perspectives
- Andrew K. Frank(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- ABC-CLIO(Publisher)
Based largely on the rhetoric of the Revolution and on the presumed demands of a democratic republic, patriotism and loyalty were the essence of the ideology of republican motherhood. This ideology established that women of America’s new republic, through their maternal instincts and familial roles as mothers, would raise their sons to be virtuous and loyal citizens of the republic. As republican mothers, women were conveyors of truth, loyalty, and virtue, and, by rearing a loyal genera- tion of children, they ensured the future of the democracy. By 1820, republican motherhood had morphed into the closely defined ideology of true womanhood, a popular term used in trendy 19th-century advice magazines and religious literature. The value of women remained rooted in virtue and in their centrality to creating a nation capable of a suc- cessful democracy, but their importance transcended their role as mothers. The ideology of true womanhood also embraced women as daughters, sis- ters, and wives. This ideal deemed piety, purity, submissiveness, and domes- ticity as key attributes of a true woman, who was both a good wife and a good mother. The concept emerged in part due to the slow transition from a dominant agrarian economy to an increasingly industrial economy. As the American economy became more diversified, men were drawn away from their homes and family farms, and into either a wage labor force or a profes- sional occupation (such as a lawyer, office worker, factory manager, or doc- tor). Through the establishment of a professional work force in American society came the emergence of a middle class, whose rise allowed the woman to assume the role of the dominant and most influential parent in the realm of the family, redefining her as wife and mother. 60 E A R LY R E P U B L I C P E R S P E C T I V E S I N A M E R I C A N S O C I A L H I S T O R Y The common theme linking these models was the separation of spheres: private and public, women’s and men’s.
eBook - PDF- Nancy F. Cott(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Saur(Publisher)
EDUCATION 145 The Impact of the Cult of True Womanhood on the Education of Black Women Linda M. Perkins Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College This paper compares the primary purposes and functions of educating black and white women in the 19th century. For white women, education served as a vehicle for developing homemaker skills, for reinforcing the role of wife and mother, and a milieu for finding a potential husband. For black women educa-tion served as an avenue for the improvement of their race or ' 'race uplift.'' The economic, political and social conditions which contributed to these purposes are discussed within a historical context. To better understand the education of black women vis-a-vis the education of women of the larger society, it is important to place black women within a social and historical context. This essay examines the impact of the true wom-anhood philosophy on the education of white women, and the black philosophy of race uplift on the education and development of black women in the nineteenth century. Although blacks considered the women of their race wom-en in the early and mid-nineteenth century, by the end of the century they began to place more emphasis on them being ladies. This shift in attitudes toward women by many educated male blacks will also be discussed. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CONTEXT: THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD Observers of the early nineteenth century frequently cite the emergence of the 'Cult of True Womanhood' as significantly shaping women's education during this This paper depends on two collections of papers at Howard University's Moorland-Springam Research Center: the Mary Shadd Cary Papers and the Anna J. Cooper Papers. Correspondence regarding this issue should be addressed to Dr. Linda M. Perkins, The Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. 0022-4537/83/090(W»l7$3.00/l · The Society for the Psychological Study of Social laues
eBook - PDFThe Girl on the Magazine Cover
The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media
- Carolyn Kitch(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- The University of North Carolina Press(Publisher)
The American Woman series appeared in the Journal every other month in 1897, beginning with the January issue and ending in Novem-ber, portraying women in society, in religion, in the home, in summer, in business, and in motherhood. These various aspects of readers’ lives were also addressed in articles and advertisements inside the magazine. Although the magazine acknowledged the phenomenon of a New Woman and her involvement in public life, its editorials routinely pro-moted the Cult of True Womanhood. In addition to the characteris-tics with which historian Barbara Welter has defined this nineteenth-century ideal—piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity—Karen Blair adds ‘‘society’’s emphasis on training young ladies in the arts, especially vocal and instrumental music, literary study, drawing, paint-ing, and dance.’’ 13 Such qualities made women the ruling moral force of the home, a private sphere separate from the male world of commerce. Journal editor Edward Bok, writing in the September 1897 issue, de-scribed the ‘‘true’’ American woman as ‘‘the home-loving woman, the woman fond of her children, and with a belief in God.’’ 14 These qualities were represented in half of Alice Barber Stephens’s American Woman series. To the late-twentieth-century viewer, Stephens’s illustration called ‘‘The Woman in Religion’’ (Figure 1.1) seems as if it must have been mis-titled. Yet it would have made sense to readers of the Journal in 1897. It showed a small room in a home and four generations of females: a woman sewing, an older woman reading aloud, an elderly woman lying in bed, and a little girl crouched on the floor. ‘‘Religion’’ as it was repre-sented in this picture was the province of women and something that naturally took place at home. The title suggested that what one woman was reading aloud was the Bible, and what the viewer was seeing were daily devotions, taking place in the course of family caregiving and homemaking.
eBook - PDFMothers and Daughters in Nineteenth-Century America
The Biosocial Construction of Femininity
- Nancy M. Theriot(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- The University Press of Kentucky(Publisher)
35 A.J. Graves, in Woman in America, embodied the double message about domesticity: the combination of advocacy and admission of pain. She wrote in the preface that women should be stronger in the domestic sphere and that women's education should correspond to their domestic duties. She later asserted, "For a woman to be domes- tic is so consonant with every feeling of her heart, and so true to her nature, that where she is not so it must be the result of a training which has counteracted the design of Providence, and guided her contrary to her innate propensities." Less than ten pages later, she described a typical overworked wife, a woman settled into domestic- ity: "Cares eat away at her heart; the day presses on her with new toils; the night comes, and they are unfulfilled; she lies down in weariness, and rises with uncertainty; her smiles become languid and few." 36 Graves is an example of what the maternal generation was telling young women about womanhood. It is woman's nature to be domestic. It conforms to a great social law. Domesticity results in sickness, weariness, and unhappiness. Your life as a woman will be confined to this sphere and will necessarily involve suffering and unhappiness. Your self-worth, fulfillment, and social significance are directly proportional to your faithful role performance. Thomas Low Nichols and Mary S. Gove summarized this attitude precisely. They wrote, "Women are everywhere instructed that it is better to endure everything than to attempt to change their position. It is for the good of society; for the sake of the children." 37 The maternal generation demonstrated femininity by sending a double message about marriage and domesticity; women also instructed daughters on feminine behavior in the mother-daughter relationship itself.
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