Piety, Purity, Domesticity, And Submissiveness

According to the work of Barbara Welter «The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860» these were the four essential virtues in the making of a woman. What made the cult (culture of domesticity) possible and what were its outcomes? Besides being traced back to the very origins of European abusive behaviors, we can find the roots in the fight for Independence, the start of Industrialization, and religion. Many contradictions and strange circumstances — that is what lead women of the nation into years of unnatural obedience. How it started During the Revolutionary years of 1775-1783, women not only have been living the war camp life alongside men (in most cases providing men with basic survival: nursing, feeding, and fighting on exceptional occasions) but also took care of the estate, ran businesses, organized entities for money donations and self-produced goods to boycott the British. They realized that if allowed they could be as good as men in some spheres closed to them before. Their voices were heard, and they were not invisible anymore. That, of course, to a certain degree for even a woman as influential as Abigail Adams, the closest advisor of one of the Founding Fathers — John Adams, was declined in her request to «remember the ladies» and limit the power held by the Husbands.

After the War, everything came back to the way it was for the exception of husbands, brothers, and sons leaving the women to lone survival in a world where they had no legal rights or value. The Revolution helped women understand their strength, significance, and role in the society they were living in. The reaction to this was made out of restrictions. Other restrictions came from the age of Industrialization. Even though domestic hardships were getting easier on women with new machines developed (together with servants or slaves to help out), women’s place was now even more bound to home. The distinction between men and women grew with a 1810s-1820s abolishment of property requirements for white men to vote and hold office — now it wasn’t all about property, it was about sex. With husbands off to work, all house maintenance duties were now solely on women’s shoulders in addition to raising children. Since none of these essential chores brought monthly income to the family, it lost its value — a woman became one with the house, its light. A light physical (if one might say so) and spiritual.

In the making of a «True Womanhood» concept religion played a huge part. Traditional European Catholic notions of women being more dangerously sexual than men shifted to the Protestant belief of a woman to be a non-sexual, almost divine spirit of home and church. The reason for that could lay in Protestant views on women being spiritually equal to men in front of God. For women it meant stricter rules to obey to fit in the frames and a small freedom to participate and organize voluntarily work for «spiritual and moral uplift of the poor and unsaved», believing that it is «the absence of family values, rather than economic forces, was what made poor people poor». Thus has started political participation of women in American society, which would ultimately lead to demanding the right to vote.

The Declaration of Sentiments constituted during the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, was the first document to represent a woman’s desire to vote, yet the right was debated during the Convention itself, and the Declaration was to be considered «the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity» (Oneida Whig) at the time of release. There was still a long way to go. Meanwhile, the main purpose of a woman’s life could be best described by the lines of Coventry Patmore’s poem: «Man must be pleased; but him to please Is woman's pleasure», and most women fully supported the idea. They found glory in devotion, sacrifice, unpaid domestic labor, and raising children. It gave them the needed purpose in life and the feeling of importance and indispensability. Since they were the ones constructing the basic morality and knowledge of future generations, they had to be educated to a certain extent. This way by the nineteenth century not solely being a woman was a noble «profession» but also educating the young. Not to mention it was cheaper to hire a woman-teacher than a man. With Industrialization at its development and many new jobs being available to people, the middle class extended leading to a fixed setting of an ideal family. There was no need for extra-hands, and living conditions improved resulting in a smaller amount of children in the household and more time for enlightenment.

As opposed to ‘rotten’ and vice upper class, families of the middle class wanted to set an example and spiritually guide the ones in the need of God. Women were the ones whose merits and ‘proper sphere’, it being home, were perfect for the job — «unlike participation in other societies or movements, church work would not make her less domestic or submissive». Even though the culture of True Womanhood extended to all women, it was mostly a white Protestant-dominated sphere. Comparing to other Christian forms, Protestantism was one of the most accepting of the ‘defective’, still due to prejudice and discrimination either for good or bad, women of color and immigrant women were usually excluded from the ability to become a ‘true woman’. Still, a woman of any color, class, or origin in Lucy Larcom’s words was sent by God «to be a helper» and make the «house of humanity a habitable and beautiful place». This ’house’ extended from a family to the nation — making women all-powerful in the divine and home-ridden, powerless in the matters of society. For obvious reasons it limited immensely the freedoms of half the population and made the differences in abilities and influences between the sexes more drastic.

Still, the cult of domesticity provided women with education and resulted in growing anticipation among the early feminist movement to later disembogue into the ideal of the New Woman — a suffragette of the Progressive Era. Even though a century had to pass for the burst in the equal rights movement, the majority’s response was still the one relevant to Henry F. Harrington’s on women not fitting into the prescribed ideals of True Womanhood being «only semi-women» and «mental hermaphrodites». It has always been hard for a woman to survive and fit into the frames of the acceptable in a man’s world. The era of True Womanhood, on the other hand, is filled with contradictions. Woman’s place had been fully restricted to domesticity and church, yet most of them were fully supportive of the notion because now they had a purpose in life. They were praised for their teaching skills in educating the young and lost, yet in other questions had no voice. A true woman was ‘pure’, yet had a couple of children by her side. She was an Angel, and as one was invisible. She was a myth that worked.