"Cult of Domesticity"

The actual picture is more complicated, however. To begin with, we may note that many nineteenth-century feminists agreed as fully with the cult of domesticity as did their opponents. As Paula Baker has noted, "On one subject all of the nineteenth-century antisuffragists and many suffragists agreed: a woman belonged in the home." Moreover, the cult of domesticity, and the views of the two sexes with which it was related, had much to do with the rise of feminism as an active political force.

Women, according to the doctrine of the cult of domesticity, were less vigorous and forceful than men, and in the common view were therefore less suited to the rough-and-tumble of public life. At the same time, they were conceded to be the more moral sex, whose natural role as childbearers and childrearers suited them to the task of raising the moral tone of society. This attitude could cut either of two ways. We are more familiar now with the image of th

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lace" could be in the context of the cult of domesticity. If the ideology of republicanism denied women the (occasional) overt place in public life which the accidents of inheritance had sometimes opened up to them, it did not, however, wholly deny them a significant role under the republican dispensation. Republican doctrine tended to emphasize the martial virtues, but it recognized that other virtues were necessary if society was to be more than a band of warriors. The republican militiaman had a higher cause to fight for than mere glory on the battlefield, and what was that higher cause other than protection of home and hearth. And how was devotion to home and hearth to be inculcated in him other than by and through woman? It was the solemn duty of women to raise loyal, devoted republican sons, and to raise daughters who would in turn be fit to raise "Womanhood was more than just a negative referent, for it assigned the continued safety of the republic to the hands of disinterested, selfless, moral women." If women were the moral repositories of society, how were they to exercise their responsibilities? Generally and predominantly, of course, within the private sphere of the home. But once women were acknowledged to h
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Paula Baker, Beecher Stowe, Daughters Temperance, Feminist--New Style, Government Wherever, Married Women, , Stowe Half, Estelle Freedman, Queen Elizabeth, cult domesticity, public life, economic life, beecher stowe, woman's peculiar, woman's peculiar sphere, peculiar sphere, harriet beecher stowe, vaughan addressed, middle-class women, temperance movement, women's history, natural sphere women,
Approximate Word count = 2418
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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