The Cult of True Womanhood - Essay Example

The Cult of True Womanhood Starting with Barbara Welter in the mid-1960s, feminist scholarship has explored the various issues and aspects of the ‘cult of True Womanhood.’ This phrase refers to an ideology that developed in the mid-nineteenth century that defined what it meant to be a True Woman in America during that time period as it is represented in the written records of diaries, journals, newspapers, magazines and other media. “The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues – piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife – woman. Without them, no matter whether there was fame, achievement or wealth, all was ashes. With them, she was promised happiness and power” (Welter 1966 p. 152). Scholarship has focused on how this ideology was promoted both by women and men, constricting others to ‘fall into line’ if they wished to be accepted in society. “The dominant image remains that of a middle-class housewife happily trading in agricultural labor alongside men for the joys of urban domesticity and childrearing” (Hewitt 2002 p. 156). At the same time it was working to constrain women within a codified image, this thought process served as the catalyst to push women into the public sphere. In describing the types of woman that emerged from this culture, Welter explained “some challenged the standard, some tried to keep the virtues and enlarge the scope of womanhood. Somehow through this mixture of challenge and acceptance, or change and continuity, the True Woman evolved into the New Woman” (Welter 1966 p. 174). Although the idea of the True Woman really only defined a small percentage of the women of America, namely the white, middle-class urban woman, this ideology functioned to both constrain women from participating in the world outside of the home as well as to propel women into the outer world. In leaving the farms for the cities with the new modernization of the cities and factories, Welter and others hypothesized that it became necessary for women to uphold the traditional ideologies the family had held dear while in a rural setting, thereby restricting them to a single idealized image of what embodies the True Woman. “The nineteenth-century American man was … at work long hours in a materialistic society. The religious values of his forebears were neglected in practice if not in intent, and he occasionally felt some guilt that he had turned this new land, this temple of the chosen people, into one vast countinghouse. But he could salve his conscience by reflecting that he had left behind a hostage, not only to fortune, but to all the values which he held so dear and treated so lightly. Woman, in the cult of True Womanhood … was the hostage in the home” (Welter 1966 p. 21). According to Poovey (1988), it was by “linking morality to a figure (rhetorically) immune to the self-interest and competition integral to economic success, [the cult] preserved virtue without inhibiting productivity” thus creating a perfect world in which men were free to pursue every material pursuit they wished while women were constrained to remain at home and protect the moral and ethical values of the family unit. “The ideals Welter uncovered in her analysis of nineteenth-century prescriptive literature, novels, diaries, and correspondence did not simply codify modern notions of women’s place. Rather, in response to dramatic economic and political upheavals, they constructed white, middle-class ‘True Women’ as the gladiators at the gate, fending off the evils that accompanied the pursuit of wealth and power by bourgeois men and the expansion of cities, factories, and plantations that fed their success. Yet this was a warrior without armor taking her stand behind a white picket fence. As Welter noted, the nineteenth-century True Woman had ‘to uphold the pillars of the temple with her frail white hand.’” (Hewitt 2002 p. 157). That women subscribed to this ideology is evident in that “many [women] accepted the promise of domestic happiness and the circumscribed authority that supposedly inhered in piety, purity and submissiveness” (Roberts 2002 p. 150). Hewitt (2002) points out “it was precisely those women with the greatest access to education, economic resources, and public authority who were most constrained by the cult’s precepts, yet it was also these women who most often embraced them.” The concept of the True Woman was founded on four core principles – those of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. According to Hewitt (2002), “native born northern white women became an increasingly undifferentiated category, all middle-class adherents of a dominant ideal. As work on women who stood outside the cult’s reach multiplied, then, true womanhood lost its contested, dynamic character and became hostage to all the retrograde values that affluent white womanhood masked in a field newly focused on difference and conflict.” The hierarchy of these four core values was further delineated by Welter in their order of social importance. “Young men looking for a mate were cautioned to search first for piety, for if that were there, all else would follow” (Welter 1966 p. 152). Because religion didn’t take women away from her proper place within the home like so many other societies or movements did, piety was considered a safe avenue for a woman to pursue. “She would be another, better Eve, working in cooperation with the Redeemer, bringing the world back from its revolt and sin. The world would be reclaimed for God through her suffering” (Welter 1966 p. 152). Next to piety, purity was necessary in order to access the power inherent in the cult. “Without [purity] she was, in fact, no woman at all, but a member of some lower order … To contemplate the loss of purity brought tears; to be guilty of such a crime … brought madness or death” (Welter 1966 p. 154). However, this power was expected to be relinquished upon the wedding night as the woman traded in her purity, setting up a paradox that proved difficult to explain away. “Woman must preserve her virtue until marriage and marriage was necessary for her happiness. Yet, marriage was, literally, an end to innocence. She was told not to question this dilemma, but simply to accept it” (Welter 1966 p. 158). Therefore, submission became a defining aspect of the feminine, also placing her squarely by her own fireside first as daughter and sister, later as wife and mother, bringing in the fourth dimension of domesticity. “If she chose to listen to other voices than those of her proper mentors, sought other rooms than those of her home, she lost both her happiness and her power” (Welter 1966 p. 173). However, Welter also points out that the very definition of True Womanhood established the base for its own failure in that it defined Woman in such an idealized state that it was difficult to argue why her ideas should be confined to the home rather than the greater world outside, “especially since men were making such a hash of things” (Welter 1966 p. 174). Barbara Epstein (1981) explains that this new idea of femininity was attractive to the individual woman because it promised them a lot of additional time to be a wife and a mother with the addition of a new degree of power within the home in the form of her newly added domain of religion and morality. According to Roberts (2002), “we now understand much better what doctors, scientists, politicians and political economists (to name just a few) had to gain in inscribing ‘True Womanhood’ onto the female body. Through the notion of maternal instinct, they regulated not only women’s behavior, but also an entire system of cultural practices, not least of which were the sexual division of labor and the sexual double standard.” Evidence in the written documents indicate that the universal acceptance of this idea of womanhood was not necessarily as widely embraced as nineteenth-century American society might have wished. “Welter noted the virulence with which proponents of the new femininity denounced Fourierism, socialism, agrarian radicalism, abolitionism, dress reform, and other forms of ‘fanaticism’ in sermons, magazines, and advice literature intended for the middle class, suggesting the difficulties they faced in imposing their standards even among the most likely candidates for True Womanhood” (Hewitt 2002 pp. 157-58). While there were plenty of women who ‘bought in’ to the idea of True Womanhood’, Roberts (2002) explained “some worked diligently to disseminate and enforce these ideals among their sisters. Others used their piety and purity to gain access to public influence and authority. A few directly challenged the cult, for which they were excommunicated from polite society and relegated to the ‘lower orders’ occupied by ‘fallen women,’ female laborers, immigrants and slaves.” Although pious and domesticated ladies were hostages, Hewitt (2002) suggests “they were not passively awaiting their liberator, but were instead cultivating the seeds of destruction that the cult of true womanhood itself had sown.” In addition, both Welter and Hewitt point out that the ideals held dear by the cult were further challenged by outside influences such as westward migration, industrialization, urbanization, evangelicalism, war and the abolition of slavery. Both within and without the cult, women were beginning to rebel against its constraining aspects from early on, whether they realized what they were doing or not. Roberts (2002) illustrates how journalism and the theater worked as a valve through which women were able to explore their more ‘subversive’ thoughts as well as to reach other similar minded women. “Both journalism and theater … gave women access to worlds where they were not subject to the limits imposed on the self by True Womanhood” (Roberts 2002 p. 153). For those women who felt the cult was correct in that the True Woman held a special bond with the Supreme Being that enabled her to adhere more closely to the tenets of the traditional belief system, it was a natural extension to feel that it was these individuals who should be heard within the greater community as a force to protect the very home in which she was given dominion. For others, accepting the yoke of the True Woman was a hindrance to their expressing what they felt were equally valid thoughts and ideas, wishing to be able to pursue their limits to the same degree as men without the unnatural restrictions imposed on them by those men. There were many women who helped show the way, but two in particular, Catherine Beecher and Francis Willard, who invoked the strength of the True Woman and worked within the cult to bring about the social change they felt was necessary in obtaining the evolution of the cult to that of the New Woman. In her biography on Catherine Beecher, Katherine Sklar demonstrates not only that Beecher was definitely a product of the True Womanhood cult, but also how she worked within that ideology to help bring about change and provide a socially acceptable avenue of refuge for other young women like her who felt trapped and constrained within the cult but who did not wish to necessarily step into the realms of the ‘fallen women’. The ideology of the cult can be seen in Sklar’s depiction of how Beecher struggled with the idea of marriage to Metcalf Fisher, not just on a personal level, finding him cold and too reserved, but also from a reluctance to submerge her sense of self to the traditional role of True Woman. However, the prevalent thought at the time regarding the role of a woman and the importance of her personal views on matters such as this are clearly expressed in the reported reaction of her father to her concerns. “Let no caprice or inconsistency on your part becloud a prospect so deservedly a subject of complacency to your friends and so full of promises of earthly good” (Sklar 1973 p. 36). After Fisher was lost at sea, Beecher struggled to find comfort in her religion, but emerged from the struggle unable to relinquish her sense of self and self-will. As a result of the new philosophy she had worked out for herself, one centered around the ideas of sacrifice and social service, Beecher moved to Hartford, Connecticut and opened up new schools as well as a series of other educational and beneficial enterprises. The philosophy that enabled her to do this in the public sphere without losing her connection to the True Woman was outlined in several tracts, books and lectures. Considered a prime spokesman for the domestic ideology, Beecher took the model of womanhood that restricted women to roles within the home or school thanks to the strong moral qualities that were exceptionally theirs and gave this role a significant social importance. This provided women with a sense of self-respect and value as women. Like Catherine Beecher, Francis Willard worked from within the cult of the True Woman to bring other women into a more public sphere by focusing on the responsibilities of women to protect their homes and families. According to Amy Slagell (2001), “Willard knew that by recruiting, organizing and energizing interested women to being their work of transforming the world as she believed they were called to do, women would come to a new awareness of their power so that not only would the outer world be transformed, but the women themselves as well.” She introduced her so-called Home Protection argument to the ladies of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union “as a wedge argument, a way to break through the walls of prejudice an ‘average woman’ would likely bear toward suffrage and women’s political work” (Slagell 2001 p. 10). Although she often referred to the ‘no taxation without representation’ argument as it applied to her own personal feelings, she took a “shrewd” approach of “a series of tangential moves, in the course of which women … were gradually led to understand that they could not protect their homes and families from liquor or other vices, without a voice in public affairs” (Flexnor 1975 p. 187). Because she knew she was working with many women who had, prior to their involvement with the WCTU, subscribed wholly to the concept of the True Woman, Willard’s approach “encouraged women to see themselves as serious participants in the political community” in a less threatening manner, allowing them to evolve the cult rather than destroy it altogether. In addition, Willard played a large role in making the murky business of politics available to women without ‘dirtying their skirts’ by further emphasizing the virtues of the True Woman and illustrating a picture in which women are necessary in the public sphere in order to clean up the mess that has been made by men. “Notably, while Willard used the ideal of domesticity to further her argument, she directly rejected another part of the True Womanhood ideal: submissiveness” (Slagell 2001 p. 10). Instead, she helped strengthen women’s faith by helping them rediscover “scriptural passages that supported women’s activism and as they experienced a calling from God to work for temperance and for Home Protection” (Gifford 1986 p. 111). As women and men held roles in different but complementary spheres, it was necessary for women to be involved in the public sphere if they were to provide the type of protection they were expected to provide. Through such women as Francis Willard and Catherine Beecher, women who subscribed fully to the concept of the True Woman were able to break the constraints of the True Woman ideal and come to an understanding of the issues involving women’s suffrage that didn’t threaten their own concepts of who they were and what they stood for. Although they were constrained by the tenets of the True Woman themselves, these women were able to affect change and hold socially acceptable public careers by expanding on those strengths that were afforded them through this same doctrine. By appealing to their concepts of protecting the home and family, as well as by focusing on the ideals of sacrifice and service to others, these women were able to provide a softer path for those others who cherished the ideology of a True Woman as a woman who displayed piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Works Cited Epstein, Barbara. The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1981. Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1975. Gifford, Carolyn. “Home Protection: The WCTU’s Conversion to Woman Suffrage.” Gender, Ideology, and Action: Historical Perspectives on Women’s Public Lives. Janet Sharistanian (Ed.). Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 95-120. Hewitt, Nancy. “Taking the True Woman Hostage.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1. 2002, pp. 156-62. Poovey, Mary. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Roberts, Mary Louise. “True Woman Revisited.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1. Spring 2002, pp. 150-55. Sklar, Katherine. Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. London, England: Yale University Press, 1973. Slagell, Amy. “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Vol. 4, N. 1, pp. 1-23. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2, P. 1. 1966, pp. 151-74. Read More