The Cult of True Womanhood - Essay Example

Femininity and Nuturing: A Literary Conviction 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 within this time frame, but even a cursory look at the literature of the Western tradition, spanning back thousands of years into the world of the ancient Greeks, demonstrates that this Ideal of Womanhood has been a long-standing tradition. Throughout time, women have been characterized on both sides of the Atlantic as the nurturer of the family, the keeper of the spiritual ideals of the home and the individual responsible for the welfare of the home. The ideals ‘introduced’ with the Cult of True Womanhood as they relate to the definition of femininity and the woman’s nurturing role can be traced through ancient Greece in works such as Sophicles’ Antigone, to the Middle Ages and Shakespeare’s character Desdemona into the Victorian Age with Charlotte Bronte’s character Jane Eyre and finally through the evolution of the myth of Cinderella The ideals of the True Woman were 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). Thus was the feminine vision defined, a definition that strikes suspiciously close to the representations of woman as she has appeared throughout Western literature. For example, the importance of family and adherence to religious belief has been a major theme of literature since well before the advent of Christianity, frequently ascribed into the care of the woman. The ancient Greeks, with their pantheon of gods, had deep religious convictions that reinforced many values we continue to hold sacred today, such as honor and loyalty to family and loved ones. One shining example of this type of writing can be found in the works of Sophicles in his play Antigone. This play tells the story of Oedipus’ daughter and opens shortly after the death of her two brothers, who have killed each other in a battle to see who would be king of Thebes. While one brother was buried with all honors, the other was left to rot in the sun under punishment of King Creon if any should attempt burial procedures. Antigone, outraged at the dishonor shown her family regardless of the outside circumstances, also expresses her deep-seated belief that it is against the wishes of the gods to leave any of their subjects unburied. She is the frustrated guardian of the family’s spiritual observance. Antigone enters the first scene of the play already in a rage after learning that the new king, Creon, has forbidden to allow one of her brothers to be buried, introducing the central conflict of the play immediately. She decides to go against the king’s orders, arguing that burying the dead is the right thing to do. “Antigone, driven by family duty and love, cannot but fight against Creon’s decision.” (Lathan, 2002). Her role as the nurturer of the family makes it impossible for her to drop the issue and her stubborn determination to abide by what she feels is right makes it impossible for her to approach the issue in any way other than head-on. It is clear she’s outraged that the king would tell her to ignore her feminine duties when she is talking to her sister at the very beginning of the play: “What’s this they’re saying now, / something our general has had proclaimed / throughout the city? Do you know of it? / … / Dishonours which better fit our enemies / are now being piled up on the ones we love” (Johnston, 2005: 8-10, 12-13). She cannot believe someone would order her to go against the mandates of her community-held religious convictions or prevent her from performing the duties of family toward the dead. Instead of adhering to the orders of the king, she brazenly goes out to give her brother the last rites necessary for his spirit to find its way to the next world as is caught in the act by the king’s soldiers. In the end, it doesn’t matter to Creon if her ideas were founded on trying to please the gods; she is put to death for her stubborn insistence on doing what she has determined is right in relation to her brothers regardless of what her uncle has decided. In acting on her beliefs, she openly defied Creon and proudly admits that she is a traitor when she is caught: “I did not think / anything which you proclaimed strong enough / to let a mortal override the gods / and their unwritten and unchanging laws” (Johnston, 2005: 510-513) she says spitefully to the king in response to why she disobeyed his law. In this, she becomes the epitome of the True Woman. Moving forward in time, William Shakespeare’s play Othello, written in the late 1500s, presents one of his strongest female characters in the form of Desdemona, a woman who demonstrates an unusual strength and resolve for her period. The play opens with Othello, a Moor who has achieved the rank of a commanding general in Venice, attempting to defend himself against accusations that he has wronged the daughter of a wealthy Venetian merchant. As an angry crowd incited by Iago begins to gather, Desdemona appears at Othello’s side, taking up a position she will not abandon throughout the remainder of the play. No matter what happens throughout the course of the play, she holds steadfast to her ideas of virtue and honor. There are several instances in which Desdemona demonstrates the concepts of femininity and her duty to nurture throughout the play, including her defense of her decision to marry Othello, her loyalty to Cassio as her husband’s best friend and closest advisor despite the obvious distress this causes her husband and her steadfast devotion to her husband displayed in the face of Othello’s unreasonable and unfounded jealousy. Desdemona gives an appropriate sense of familial responsibility for the age and as it has been seen throughout history almost as soon as she enters the opening scene. She tells her father “To you I am bound for life and education; / My life and education both do learn me / How to respect you: you are the lord of duty; / I am hitherto your daughter” (I, iii, 182-85). However, she is now married to Othello and informs her father as well as the Senate that her duties henceforward belong solely and primarily to her husband. With the strength of her upbringing in the appropriate feminine form, with special emphasis upon the nurturing role she is expected to undertake, Desdemona is as convinced of her loyalty to her husband as she is of her previous loyalty to her father. “Desdemona does not shrink before the Senate; and her language to her father, though deeply respectful, is firm enough to stir in us some sympathy with the old man” (Bradley, 1905, p. 204). Although she must have been frightened of leaving behind all the comfort she’s known in her father’s house as well as the social status this conferred upon her, now gone through her association with the Moor, Desdemona shows no weakness as she faces the crowd because of her strength in fulfilling her feminine duties. Desdemona’s tragic flaw is also found within this concept of the feminine ideal as she continues to honor her promise to Cassio to defend him to Othello as a means of providing her husband with a loyal service by restoring to him a trusted and valuable advisor. She has told him, “Be thou assurd, good Cassio, I will do / All my abilities in thy behalf” (III, iii, 1-2) and “Do not doubt, Cassio, / But I will have my lord and you again / As friendly as you were” (III, iii, 5-7), making a promise in good faith to a true friend yet unknowingly fanning the flames of Iago’s insinuations. While this action demonstrates her natural character, “We have already a slight example in her overflowing kindness, her boldness and her ill-fated persistence in pleading Cassio’s cause” (Bradley, 1905, p. 204), the way in which she goes about arguing Cassio’s case takes on the patina of the fearful shrew. “In merging the postures of good wife and shrew, Desdemona indirectly challenges the presumption of their difference enforced in marriage handbooks, homilies, church courts, misogynist pamphlets, and the like” (Bartels, 1996). Her strength is shown in her steadfast loyalty to her convictions as they are in keeping with feminine traditions of family and nurturing. As it turns out, Desdemona needs all the strength that she has in order to cope with the unreasoned jealousy of Othello. While she defines herself within the traditional bounds of a good wife and child throughout the play, she also uses these definitions to assert herself within her world. “While Othello uses acquiescence to repress, Desdemona uses it to assert herself, to sanction the expression of her own desires” (Bartels, 1996). However, Iago’s machinations have rendered these skills impotent and have, in fact, turned them against her as far as Othello’s concerned. “Sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on / And turn again; and she can weep, sir, weep; / And she’s obedient; as you say, obedient, / Very obedient – Proceed you in your tears. – / Concerning this, sir – O well-painted passion!” (IV, i, 246-49). This change in the way the world works has Desdemona confused and she is unable to abandon her source of strength in order to survive. “The strength of her soul, first evoked by love, found scope to show itself only in a love which, when harshly repulsed, blamed only its own pain; when bruised, only gave forth a more exquisite fragrance; and, when rewarded with death, summoned its last laboring breath to save its murderer” (Bradley, 1905, p. 204). Yet even in this regard, Desdemona remains a source of strength. “While she seems, to feminists dismay, to defend Othello to the end (and even after) at her own expense, she actually exonerates herself and implicates him. She presents herself as a loyal wife, willing to sacrifice herself for love. But registered within her narrative of self-sacrifice is what we have been waiting desperately for her to produce – testimony of her fidelity and Othellos error” (Bartels, 1996). By steadfastly refusing to blame her husband for her own murder even though she still does not understand where his suspicion has sprung from, Desdemona remains strong through the end. This is completely in character for her as it has been traced in her willingness to flaunt tradition to follow her passion as well as in her inability to ignore her promises to Cassio or her duties to Othello. She remains completely a female character bound by the rules of the feminine and within her role as the nurturing aspect of the family unit. By the Victorian era, writers were beginning to challenge the concept of the feminine constraints within society. Charlotte Bronte’s popular book Jane Eyre presents its readers with a rather critical view of Victorian life as it existed for women. As her main character, Jane, progresses from childhood through to adulthood, she demonstrates the difference between the Victorian society life that would have her ignore all her feelings and her own personal life in which her feelings are unable to be squelched so rigidly. As Jane grows through the book, this conflict between society’s rules and her inner feelings becomes more and more obvious, finally reaching a resolution at the end in which she has found both an accepting home and status while retaining her own inner fire, thus allowing Jane an acceptable world for her while still reinforcing the concepts of femininity that have thus far been identified. Growing up in an unloving home, an orphan living in her aunt’s house and suffering cruel treatment from her, Jane still manages to convey the depth of her feelings as she flies into a rightful rage at her cousin and then suffers hallucinations while locked in the red room where her uncle had died. Jane’s only hope of realizing her own emotions is through her escape to Lowood School. However, upon arriving there, she finds a world at least as harsh as the one she left behind. In her search for love and affection, she meets Helen Burns and is finally able to express to someone her own inner heart. It is through Helen that Jane is finally able to achieve some sort of physical intimacy with another human being as Helen allows Jane to hold her hand and exchanges hugs with her. Jane tells her new friend, “to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest” (Ch. 8). Rather than being melodramatic, Jane truly feels her affections cannot run deeper than they are and struggles to find the words to express her desire to find someone who feels this same depth of affection for her. However, Helen’s advice to Jane is to bear her sufferings in silence and with patience. “Helen never shows resentment, even when she becomes the favorite target of the school’s nastiest teacher, Miss Scatcherd. But when Mr. Brocklehurst humiliates Jane by repeating Mrs. Reed’s charge against her in front of the whole school, she rebels” (“Jane Eyre”, 2006). Despite her love for her friend, Jane cannot accept the meek and submissive attitude Helen adopts as this would require a submission of herself. Moving into Thornfield, Jane finds herself falling in love with the house’s owner, Rochester, but fears her feelings will again be subjugated under his domination. Even before she finds out about Bertha, Jane realizes that while she is every bit as capable intellectually as Rochester is, her poverty and social standing would never allow her to be his equal and she would therefore be forced to subjugate her emotions to his wishes at every turn. “Both he and she believe implicitly the things they read in eyes, in nature, in dreams” (Brownell, 1993). She tells him “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you” (Ch. 23). The example has already been set for her in this house in the form of Bertha, Rochester’s first wife, who has gone mad from her enclosure in the third floor of the house. “Bertha is considered insane because of her intense sensuality. Bertha is represented as a sort of taboo sexuality that is forbidden to the others” (Crookston, 1999). Mr. Mason, Bertha’s brother, illustrates the idea that the pair are from Jamaica, a part of the world often thought of as breeding very passionate, free-thinking individuals and Bertha’s madness can be seen as the aftereffects of having to subdue that passion within the Victorian society in which it found itself. A third individual who brings out the passionate side of Jane and illustrates her dedication to finding a relationship that allows her to both give and receive uncensored affection is found in St. John. In this character, Bronte illustrates the passion for glory and self-aggrandizement inherent in some people at the expense of any true emotion. Although Jane has found a couple of kindred spirits in St. John’s sisters, she also finds herself falling under the cold calculation of St. John himself. “By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind … I fell under a freezing spell” (Ch. 34). His proposal of marriage encourages her to sacrifice her emotions in order to fulfill her moral duty as it is defined by the Victorian society, but this type of life is not acceptable to her. “As his curate, his comrade, all would be right … But as his wife – at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked – forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital – this would be unendurable” (Ch. 34). “St. John feels that the proposed union would be logical; he reasons that Jane would be the perfect fit as a missionary wife and entreats her to simplify her various [feelings and thoughts]. … After listening to her adamant statement, St. John shows little emotion, except for a pair of compressed lips, and once again responds very calmly by reasoning why he did not deserve that statement” (Sorenson, 1995). There is a final resolution to the story, though, when Jane is reunited with Rochester after Bertha is dead and he has been blinded. At this point in the story, she has inherited her own money from her uncle, making her finally Rochester’s social equal as well as able to provide for herself whether he is there or not. Having always been his intellectual equal, she no longer has need to fear subjugation of her emotions by him. Indeed, since he now must lean on her for support in his blindness, she has achieved even more freedom than most Victorian ladies had a right to expect and rejoices in the balance: “I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. . . . We are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result” (Ch. 38). Thus, the novel reflects not only the Victorian attitudes toward feminine emotion, but points out the importance of allowing that emotion its free expression for the happiness of all. It is only through the affections freely exchanged that the characters are able to attain any true degree of happiness and those characters that encourage the loss of feeling display woeful views on life and relationships. Rather than being able to appreciate the entire woman, characters such as St. John and the younger version of Rochester are only able to see the side of Jane that they wish to possess. As the story closes, we see Rochester enjoying the complete Jane because of who she is rather than as a thing to be owned. However, the ideals of womanhood, particularly as they apply to her role as a nurturer, are emphasized as being essential to the happy conclusion of the novel. It can be argued that Jane’s happiness is only achieved once Rochester is reduced to a position in which he requires someone to nurture him. A similar progression of sorts can be traced through the variations that have been adapted to the well-loved myth of Cinderella. This can be especially traced as one experiences the versions of the story presented by the Grimm Brothers, that produced by Walt Disney and the more modern version of “Ever After” starring Drew Barrymore in rapid succession. The Brothers Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm, were the first to put the age-old story of a poor little princess turned pauper turned princess to paper as a means of preserving the rich oral history of their German homeland in the early 1800s. Because the story was written during a time of strong Christian morality, the stories contain a blatant religious overtone – including the beginning when Cinderella is told by her dying mother that her responsibility in life is to “be good and pious.” The step-sisters in this version are beautiful to look upon, but the brothers describe them as “vile and black of heart.” It is only through her dedication to her mother that she is given the secret of the magic hazel tree that grants her wishes just as it is only through this magic that the two evil step-sisters are punished for their lack of proper feminine decorum. This is a gruesome tale compared to that presented by Walt Disney in 1950. To make her dreams come true and again as a reward for her nurturing behavior toward her step-sisters and step-mother, Cinderella is given a fairy godmother, who decks her out for the ball and sends her off to the one night event in the luxurious pumpkin coach. But she must leave by midnight when everything will turn back into the humble stuff of their origins, demonstrating a sense of obedience and modesty. Her production of the other glass slipper proves her identity and her ability to nurture something delicate and she lives happily ever after – far away from her evil sisters who are left to enjoy their own misery. These two early versions of the myth are somewhat combined in the more recent version of the story portrayed in Ever After. For the first time, Cinderella is provided with a true name – Danielle. This story pays tribute to the Brothers Grimm and Disney before launching into the rest of the tale. Instead of constantly being the demure, pious Cinderella that is introduced by the Grimm Brothers, Cinderella here is portrayed as a tomboy in youth and a serious thinker as a young woman. Like Disney’s version, her father dies while she is still a child, making room for the step-mother to turn her into a servant. Like the Grimm’s version, both of her step-sisters are attractive, but only one of them is evil, the other step-sister is sympathetic to Cinderella’s condition and is rewarded in the end with a court courtier who is perfect for her. In this version, an entire romance is able to be carried out between the prince and Cinderella prior to the ball. The part of the fairy godmother is actually played by the combined efforts of an artist friend of Cinderella and Leonardo da Vinci as an example of an individual who rose from the ranks of less-than-regal bloodline to consort with kings and queens. This also indicates that Cinderella earned her ‘magic’ as the result of her own character and nurturing friendships. Rather than all her dreams coming true at the ball, it seems to be the end of Cinderella’s dreams as first she is exposed as a servant, then the prince rejects her in public and finally she is sold to a lascivious rich merchant to get her out of the way. However, she manages to free herself from her bondage before discovering the prince on his way to rescue her, allowing them to live happily ever after. Despite advances in the portrayal of women in more modern literature, particularly that literature produced in the past 20 years or so, there has been a long-standing tradition to portray women as being primarily responsible for the home, the hearth and the heart of the family. This is not a phenomenon that emerged within a single era, nor has it been a condition affecting only a generation or so of women. As it can be seen through this quick overview of literary favorites, the definition of femininity has revolved around the concept of nurturing as early as the Greeks, continued in the Middle Ages and throughout the Victorian period, stretching into the contemporary period and new media expressions. References Bartels, Emily C. 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Available 29 March 2007 from Lathan, Peter. (5 May 2002). “Dic Edwards, Pip Utton and Jean Anouilh.” Theatre in Wales. Available 29 March 2007 from Luske, Hamilton & Jackson, Wilfred (Director). (1995). Cinderella. [Animated Motion Picture]. California: Disney. Shakespeare, William. (1969). “Othello.” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Alfred Harbage (Ed.). New York: Penguin Books. Sorenson, Jane. (May 1994). “Conflict Between Emotion and Passion in Jane Eyre and Through the Looking Glass.” The Victorian Web. Brown University. Available 29 March 2007 from Tennant, Andy (Director). (2003). Ever After. California: Twentieth Century Fox. Welter, Barbara. (1966). “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2, P. 1, pp. 151-74. Read More