“Cult of True Womanhood” English 441 Dr. Roggenkamp

“True Womanhood” PUBLIC SPHERE vs. PRIVATE SPHERE 1820s-1880s Powerful ideology perpetuated through print culture, religion, public and private discourses IDEOLOGY—never complete actuality Class- and race-based Ultimate goals: marriage and motherhood

Four Key Virtues: Religious Piety Women naturally religious Woman’s 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

Four Key Virtues: Moral Purity Maintain chastity against wilder passions of men Lose chastity—lose status as a true woman Image: Mid nineteenth-century prostitutes, New York City

Four Key Virtues: Submissiveness Women the passive responders to husband/brothers/father Suppress own talents and voice to men’s Rebel against men = rebel against God Image: “A Reading Party,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1846.

Four Key Virtues: Domesticity HOME ideal place—man’s 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)

1848 Seneca Falls Convention Arguably first mass meeting for women’s 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 soul’s high worth. Such women’s rights, and God will bless And crown their champions with success.”