The phrase "cult of domesticity" expresses an attitude about the role of women and the social relationship of the sexes that has ancient roots, but which reached its peak in the nineteenth century: the belief that the natural sphere of women and women's activities was the home and family. To most people today, and certainly to all individuals of feminist inclinations, the assumptions about women (and men) implied by the cult of domesticity seem deeply constraining, as to the roles left available to women under these assumptions.
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 the frail woman imprisoned on a pedestal. But the cult of domesticity also empowered women to make moral demands upon society, such as the demand of the temperance movement for reduction or elimination of the use of alcohol. The temperance movement itself appears quaint to the modern eye, but in its time it was closely bound up with feminism and suffragism. Alcohol was a home-wrecker, the "Temperance ladies" said; thus it was woman's natural task to challenge ...