Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood - Essay Example

THE CULT OF DOMESTI The 19th Century (specifically the period between 1820 and 1860), saw rapid industrialization taking place especially in Europe and America. Apart from having lasting impact on the economy it also resulted in emergence of a new type of middle class family where the head of families worked as lawyers, factory managers, merchants, teachers, doctors or other professions. This was known as the Nineteenth Century Middle Class Family. (1) Although it had its roots in the pre-industrial family the new middle class differed in three distinct ways from its precursor. First, the family did not need to live off the land and make their own clothing etc to survive. There were jobs for men which yielded goods and services so the women and children could stay home. Secondly, with only men working to earn a living for their families, a general perception existed that only man could be the "bread earners". This view maintained that the practical world was a rough and violent place which was full of troubles and temptations and a man had to survive as best as he could. Because the women were gentle and delicate by nature, such an environment was no place for them. Instead her place was in the home where she took charge of all the affairs of the house. And third, such a family started considering itself as the backbone of society and the importance and relevance of relatives decreased. (1) _____________________________ 1 Smith, Heleva Huntington. Pioneers in Petticoats. American Heritage X (Feb. 1959): 36-39, 101-103. This re-structuring of society also resulted in revision of the views about a woman's role in family and society. As men became the primary source of earning a livelihood for the family, women found more and more leisure time at their hands. Social leaders, male and female, began to emphasize domestic and religious activities as a way to fill that leisure time. Since men had become the primary source of income for women, it was deemed natural to invoke the Pauline doctrine that women be submissive to men. Through their increased activities in church and Sunday school, women were able to nullify Paul's decree on woman's silence in church. To show that the emerging middle class women were becoming as lady-like as the upper, leisure class, an increasing emphasis on purity in women developed. This view has been defined by Barbara Welter as the Cult of True Womanhood. (2) According to the Cult, a woman was essentially a hostage of her house-hold. In a rapidly evolving society the values changed with equal rapidity and fortunes rose and fell on a daily basis. In such uncertain times only one thing remained constant - a true woman. The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors, and her society could be divided into four cardinal virtues or ideals :- Ideal One - Piety: Religion or piety was the cardinal virtue of the True Woman. It was a common belief of the time that a woman had a natural inclination towards religion. Mrs. John __________________________________ 2 Welter, Barbara. The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860. In American Quarterly, XVIII (1966), 151-74 Sanford... agreed thoroughly: "Religion is just what a woman needs. Without it she is ever restless and unhappy..." The reason why religion was given such importance was perhaps because it did not necessarily take a woman out of her sphere of influence i.e. her home. Piety was the "core of a woman's virtue, the source of her strength." All other virtues would necessarily follow. Women were expected both to uphold religious virtue within their own homes and to spread religion to others. They were the "handmaid[s] to the Gospel" whose job it was to ensure the piousness of the rest of their society. Piety, therefore, gave women "something to do" and the church reinforced all other qualities of "true women." Without piety first and foremost, a woman was "unnatural and unfeminine, in fact, no woman at all." (2) Ideal Two - Purity: Female sexual purity was another cardinal virtue of a True Woman. Without purity she was considered to be of a lower standing, a "fallen" woman. The lesson of maintaining her purity until marriage was drilled into her mind right from her childhood. The following is advice, given by Mrs. Eliza Farrar, author of The Young Woman's Friend, on how to protect oneself and one's purity: "sit not with another in a place that is too narrow; read not out of the same book; let not your eagerness to see anything induce you to place your head close to another person's." (2) All True Women were strongly urged to maintain their virtue. Although man was accepted as being more sensual than women and expected to assault their virtue, but women were expected to be pure and not to give in and let man take advantage of her. Popular literature of the time also fuelled this ideal by portraying a "fallen" woman as losing her illegitimate child and going mad herself. (2) This ideal was a contradiction within itself. A woman was expected to protect her virginity until her marriage. And then the wedding night was glorified as the most beautiful night of a woman's life when she would give the most precious gift to her husband- her virginity. So marriage was actually an end to innocence. But the True Woman was not supposed to question this dilemma. (2) After marriage, purity remained a source of power for those women who remained sexually modest and reserved. Purity thus elevated the status of women's moral authority and social power, while any social reform threatened this "treasure." Ideal Three - Submissiveness: Submissiveness of women was divinely-ordained in Ephesians 5:22-23. Pious as they were, women were expected to accept their submissive state willingly, as their nature lent itself to passivity. Marriage was the ultimate acceptance of such a station of life, since women thought that they needed to marry in order to be happy for themselves, but also that it was necessary to make men happy, and essential for the man's success in whatever he might do. (3) Submissiveness was arguably the most feminine virtue. Whereas a man was supposed to be the mover and shaker of events and actions, a woman was expected to be a passive observer. The order of precedence for things had been spelt out to her - submission to fate, to duty, to God and to men. The Young Ladies Book contained the following virtues desirable in women:- "It is certain that in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind are required of her." The clothing that the nineteenth century woman was required to wear was a __________________________ 3 Royce, Sarah. A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932. practical manifestation of the ideal of submissiveness expected out of her. Apart from limiting her physical movements etc such clothing was also supposed to make her look plain and unattractive. Any efforts at improving the dress were considered to be a break from the norms of society. Even wearing full length trousers was considered too radical a step to be contemplated. (4) A True Woman understood her place and position. According to George Burnap, in The Sphere and Duties of Woman, "She feels herself weak and timid. She needs a protector. She is in a measure dependent. She asks for wisdom, constancy, firmness, persevered ness, and she is willing to repay it all by the surrender of the full treasure of her affection. Women despise in men everything like themselves except a tender heart. It is enough that she is effeminate and weak; she does not want another like herself." Ideal Four - Domesticity: The crux of the Cult's ideals was domesticity. A woman was supposed to remain committed in those tasks which not only maintained her piety but also her purity. Housework was considered to be the most effective method of accomplishing this aim. She was expected to keep the hose cheerful and peaceful enough to attract the man away from the evils of the outer world. Needlecraft, housekeeping, wifely duties and child-rearing were the approved tasks to be performed by women. (5) In the home women were not only the highest adornment of civilization, but they __________________________ 4 The Pioneer; or California Monthly Magazine, 1 (January, 1854), 50, 108. 5 Margo, Elisabeth. Taming the '49er. New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc. 1955. were supposed to keep busy at morally uplifting tasks. Fortunately most of housework, if looked at in true womanly fashion, could be regarded as uplifting. Mrs. Sigourney extolled its virtues: "The science of housekeeping affords exercise for the judgment and energy, ready recollection, and patient self-possession, that are the characteristics of a superior mind." For the true woman, a woman's rights were as follows: The right to love whom others scorn, The right to comfort and to mourn, The right to shed new joy on earth, The right to feel the soul's high worth, Such woman's rights a God will bless And crown their champions with success. (6) Women were expected to uphold the values of stability, morality, and democracy by making the home a special place, a refuge from the world where her husband could escape from the highly competitive, unstable, immoral world of business and industry. It was widely expected that in order to succeed in the work world, men had to adopt certain values and behaviors: materialism, aggression, vulgarity, hardness, rationality. But men also needed to develop another side to their nature, a human side, an anticompetitive side. The home was to be the place where they could do this. This was where they could express humanistic values, aesthetic values, love, honor, loyalty and faithfulness. The home was no longer a unit valued for its function in the community (or _______________________ 6 its economic productiveness), but rather for its isolation from the community and its service to its members. Because the world of work was defined as male, the world of the home was defined as female. (7) From her home woman performed her great task of bringing men back to God. The Young Ladies' Class Book was sure that the "domestic fireside is the great guardian of society against the excesses of human passions...Even if we cannot reform the world in a moment, we can begin the work by reforming ourselves and our households - it is woman's mission. Let her not look away from her own little family circle for the means of producing moral and social reforms, but begin at home..." One of the most important functions of woman as comforter was her role as nurse...There were enough illnesses of youth and age, major and minor, to give the nineteenth century American woman nursing experience. The sickroom called for the exercise of her higher qualities of patience, mercy, and gentleness as well as her housewifely arts. (5) This Cult was not a deliberate conspiracy against women. It developed as a result of industrialization and immigration in the early years of the nineteenth century. But even while the women's magazines and related literature encouraged this ideal of the perfect woman, forces were at work in the nineteenth century which impelled ____________________________ 7 http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/gallery/women_part2.html woman herself to change, to play a more creative role in society. The movements for social reform, westward migration, missionary activity, utopian communities, industrialism, the Civil War - all called forth responses from woman which differed from those she was trained to believe were hers by nature and divine decree. The very perfection of True Womanhood, moreover, carried with it the seeds of its own destruction. (8) Women's rights agitation began humbly with a convention held in a small church in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Throughout the movement, women suffragists strove to uphold the seemingly contradictory goals of broadening their citizenship rights while simultaneously maintaining cultural gender expectations concerning their separate social sphere. To succeed, suffrage advocates concluded, they had to call for political change, specifically the right to vote, while concomitantly assuaging fears that this change would damage the moral, spiritual, and domestic virtues attributed to women. Given the economic, political, and social constraints on women in the late 1800 s and early 1900 s, tools of influence available to movement members were few. (4) By the end of the 19th century, women broke from the mold ascribed to them by the Cult of Domesticity. Women no longer were confined to the home or the job of motherhood. Thanks largely to the Women's Rights Movement, women were able to do just about anything men could. _____________________________ 8 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Smith, Heleva Huntington. Pioneers in Petticoats. American Heritage X (Feb. 1959): 36-39, 101-103. 2 Welter, Barbara. The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860. In American Quarterly, XVIII (1966), 151-74 3 Royce, Sarah. A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932. 4 The Pioneer; or California Monthly Magazine, 1 (January, 1854), 50, 108. 5 Margo, Elisabeth. Taming the '49er. New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc. 1955. 6 7 http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/gallery/women_part2.html 8 Read More