1. Women in Antebellum America
Separation of Spheres
& the Cult of True Womanhood

2. Intro Stuff Antebellum: “before war”
Antebellum period of U. S. History:
What’s going on?
Industrialization
Urbanization
Immigration
Westward Movement
Rise of Slavery

3. Westward Expansion

4. Industrialization (See how it’s all Northeast)

5. Immigration

6. Slave Demographics

7. Slave Distribution

8. Change is Constant All countries are always changing.
Nonetheless, the Antebellum period was a time of immense changes for the U. S.
How people lived changed.
Thus rules for how people lived changed.
Gender rules changed
Thus Women’s roles and the ideas about those roles changed

9. Separation of Spheres
Industrialization and Urbanization meant that increasingly home and work became separate.
Public Sphere: Where Waged work took place. Gendered Male.
Men were in Charge of the Public Sphere.
The Public Sphere was Active, Busy, Dangerous

10. Private Sphere:
The HOME. Where unwaged work took place. Gendered Female
The home became a place of REFUGE.
A Safe and Gentle Place that provided men with a rest from the rigors of the Public Sphere.
Women Belonged in the Private sphere because a woman’s job was to tend to men and children. To obey and submit to male needs.

11. Private Sphere became about Restriction: Evidenced in Women’s Fasions

12. Layers and Layers

14. The Kicker This ideology was “Sold” to the American public as NATURAL.
Real women wanted to be in the home because it was ordained by God and Nature.
Bad women could be found outside the home.
Bad women were unnatural or sub-human. Slave Women & Poor working women fell into this category

15. The Cult of True Womanhood
A 19th c. Gender Ideology about “how women were” that still has meaning today.
Real Women were:
1. Passive/Submissive
2. Pious/Religious
3. Pure/Assexual
4. Domestic

16. 1. Passive/Submissive
Real women were submissive to men. Real women took pleasure in submitting to authority.
Real women guided men by “gentle moral suasion” not force, argument or reason.
An 1830s minister said: The power of a woman is in her dependence. A woman who gives up her dependence becomes unnatural.

17. 2. Pious/Religous Real women were naturally more religious than men.
Women had a better understanding of Morality than men.
Women were naturally “GOOD” because of their superior understanding of morality.
(This will lead to Female Moral Authority– more on that later!)

18. 3. Domesticity
1. Real women were naturally domestic. They yearned to clean house and raise children. They were intended to by God
Women who did not
keep house for a man
or have children were
Unnatural Women.

19. How-To Manuals and Rising Domestic Standards

20. 4. Purity Real Women were Pure. Sexually Pure.
Remember Martha Ballard and Colonial Standards (like Witchcraft Lecture), where women were the Lusty Gender?
As men could leave– go to cities or move west, rules about sex had to change.
Rules about sex exist to ensure babies have two parents– one as a back-up.

21. So . . .
Gradually, in early 1800s the message went out that women WERE NOT the Lusty Gender. Men were.
Women abhorred Sex. As the morally pure gender they found it repulsive.
As the submissive gender, they had sex only when compelled to by male or maternal needs.

22. Two Forms
Before Marriage: Women were supposed to be virgins. AVOID SEX at all cost
After Marriage: Women had to have sex to become mothers, but did so with the greatest reluctance and as little as possible.
Female Sexual Pleasure was morally suspect.
Female Masturbation was Invisible.

23. The Sexual Reality
There was a lot of Birth Control Around in the 1800s. Here’s a Condom!

24. Cervical Caps (used with lemon juice or vinegar)

25. Medications & Pills

26. Douches

27. Contraceptive Sponges

28. The Point of all this Birth Control?
There’s a wide gap between PRESCRIPTIVE BEHAVIOR
(Rules about how people should act)
& REALITY
(how people really act)

29. Intra-Uterine Devices (IUDs) or Pessaries

30. And Abortions

31. Finis!