The cult of true womanhood

Question 1

“The cult of true womanhood” concept
Article written by Barbara Welter in the 1960s

Answer 1

Proclaimed class characteristics
The image of the ideal or true woman repeated in 19thC literature

Question 2

True womanhood operated like

Answer 2

A religion or a cult
Ideology was repeated so often it mimicked pastors discussing God

Question 3

Welter argued the cult of true womanhood had 4 virtues

Answer 3

Piety
Domesticity
Purity
Submissiveness

Question 4

Piety

Answer 4

Core of woman’s virtue
Natural to women
Intellectual pursuits would lead women away from the home

Question 5

Role of the church (piety)

Answer 5

Women given the power to redirect religion onto unruly men
Religion was valued because it didn’t take women away from the home
Church work did not make a woman less dependent

Question 6

Purity

Answer 6

Maintenance of sexual virtue kept women from becoming fallen
Marriage night, bestowing greatest pleasure on her husband

Question 7

Loss of purity

Answer 7

Women were expected to defend purity against men - believed to be more sensual than women
Led to the loss of women’s true power over men
Resistance to desire of men threatened submissiveness

Question 8

Maintenance of sexual purity explored in

Answer 8

Harriet Jacob’s narrative
She hides from the Doctor/chooses who to give her virtue to

Question 9

Submissiveness

Answer 9

Women could only submit to their husbands (not just any man)
“Perpetual childhood”
Possessions of a more powerful, dominant man

Question 10

1854 lecture explained

Answer 10

Women’s true submissiveness
“It is enough that she is effeminate and weak”

Question 11

Domesticity

Answer 11

Image of the ideal woman in her place the home
Religion backed this, bringing men back to God in the home
Mission to produce moral and social reforms, beginning in the home

Question 12

Patriotism (domesticity)

Answer 12

Installed in the home by men
Women expected to show patriotism by staying home
Women not allowed to vote, would increase confusion and not affect the result - would only vote for who they had been told to (by husbands or fathers)

Question 13

Women were not virtuous

Answer 13

Needed independence to be virtuous

Question 14

Home needed to be

Answer 14

Pleasant and cheerful
Meant men would not find fun in other places

Question 15

A good wife

Answer 15

Responded obediently

Question 16

Welter suggested the true womanhood

Answer 16

Carried the seeds for its own destruction
Women’s attitudes was not preventing society from crumbling - men’s actions caused this

Question 17

Harriet Jacobs wrote on the

Answer 17

4 sections of true womanhood
To challenge her readership
To make readership take action against the separate spheres of society

Question 18

Cultural and intellectual history

Answer 18

Separation between men and women’s lives