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
IDEOLOGY—never complete actuality
Class- and race-based
Ultimate goals: marriage and motherhood

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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)

7. 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.”