Cult of True Womanhood

1
Cult of True Womanhood

• English 441
• Dr. Roggenkamp

2
True Womanhood

• PUBLIC SPHERE vs. PRIVATE SPHERE
• 1820s-1880s
• Powerful ideology perpetuated through print
  culture, religion, public and private discourses
• IDEOLOGYnever complete actuality
• Class- and race-based
• Ultimate goals marriage and motherhood

3
Four Key Virtues Religious Piety

• Women naturally religious
• Womans job raise children to be good Christians
• Keep husband on straight and narrow so that he
  will be effective leader in public sphere
• Too much novel reading and education can
  undermine piety

4
Four Key Virtues Moral Purity

• Maintain chastity against wilder passions of men
• Lose chastitylose status as a true woman
• Image Mid nineteenth-century prostitutes, New
  York City

5
Four Key Virtues Submissiveness

• Women the passive responders to
  husband/brothers/father
• Suppress own talents and voice to mens
• Rebel against men rebel against God
• Image A Reading Party, Godeys Ladys Book,
  1846.

6
Four Key Virtues Domesticity

• HOME ideal placemans haven from contaminants
  and pressures of public sphere (business,
  politics)
• Home is where the heart is (sentimentality,
  sympathy, emotion, femaleness)
• Public sphere is where head is (intellect,
  reason, maleness)

7
1848 Seneca Falls Convention

• Arguably first mass meeting for womens rights in
  America
• Backlash Poem What are the Rights of Women
• 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 souls high worth.
• Such womens rights, and God will bless
• And crown their champions with success.