The culture of domestication (often abbreviated to cult of domesticity ) or true female cult is a term used by some historians to describe what they consider to be the value system prevailing among the upper and middle classes during the nineteenth century in the United States and Britain. This value system emphasizes new ideas about femininity, the role of women in the home and work and family dynamics. The "real woman", according to this idea, should have four main virtues: piety, purity, household, and obedience. The idea revolves around the woman who became the center of the family; he is considered "Light house".
Women and men most actively promoting these standards are generally white and Protestant; the most prominent of them, living in New England and Northeastern United States. Although all women should imitate the ideals of femininity, blacks, working class, and immigrant women are often excluded from the definition of "real women" because of social prejudice.
Since this idea was first proposed by Barbara Welter in 1966, many historians argue that the subject is much more complex and nuanced than terms such as "Cult of Domesticity" or "True Womanhood" indicate, and that the role played by and expected of women in the context of the middle class, the nineteenth century is quite varied and often contradictory; for example, it has been argued that much of what is considered anti-feminist in the past, in fact, helps lead to feminism.
Video Cult of Domesticity
Virtue
Part of the separate sphere ideology, "Cult of Domesticity" identifies the home as the "realm" of women. Women should inhabit private spaces, run households and produce food (including waiters), raise children, and care for husbands. According to Barbara Welter (1966), "The Real Woman" must hold and practice four main virtues:
- Piety - Religion is rewarded because - unlike intellectual pursuits - religion does not take a woman away from her "proper sphere", home, and therefore controls women's longing.
- Purity - Virginity, the greatest treasure of women, should not be lost until the night of her marriage, and married women should remain committed only to their husbands.
- Submission - Real women are required to submit and obey "as little children" because men are considered female superiors "by God's promise".
- Domestics - The proper place for a woman to be at home and her role as a wife is to create a shelter for her husband and children. Cooking, sewing, bedding, and caring for flowers are considered natural feminine activities, while reading anything other than religious biography is not recommended.
According to Welter, a True Woman ideal is "weak", too weak mentally and physically to leave his home. Her home care should be feminine, and she depends on men to protect her in her shade. Wilma Pearl Mankiller agrees, claiming that the "Real Woman" is expected to be smooth, gentle, and weak. She should not engage in heavy physical activity that would damage her much more delicate nervous system.
Frances B. Cogan, however, portrays an overlapping but competing ideology which she calls the ideal "True Woman," in which women are encouraged to be physically fit and active, engaged in their community, educated, and artistically successful, the broader idea that women are best suited to the domestic sphere. The incorporation of "Domestics" and "True Authority" can be misleading in the dedication to the domestic sphere does not necessarily mean purity, surrender, or weakness.
The characteristic of "True Womanhood" is depicted in sermons, books, and religious texts as well as women's magazines. Prescriptive literature advises women on how to turn their house into a domestic asylum for their husbands and children. Fashion is also emphasized because a woman must keep up to date to please her husband. Instructions for tailors are often included in magazines. Magazines promoting the values ​​of "Cult of Domesticity" are financially better off than competing magazines that offer a more progressive view of women's roles. In the United States, Peterson Magazine and Godey Women's Book are the most popular and popular women's magazines among women and men. With a circulation of 150,000 in 1860, Godey's reflects and supports some of the "Cult of True Womanhood" ideals. The paintings and pictures in the magazine depict four virtues, often showing women with children or behind husbands. It likewise likened womanhood to motherhood and became a wife, stating that "perfection of womanhood (...) is wife and mother". This magazine presents motherhood as the most natural and most satisfying role of women and encourages women to find satisfaction and contribution to society, especially in the home. At the same time, Godey's old editor Sarah Josepha Hale encourages women to intellectually improve themselves, write, and take action that will enhance the moral character of their community and their nation.. Hale promoted Vassar College, advocated female doctors, and published many of the most important female authors of the nineteenth century. Frances B. Cogan argues that Godey's supports "True Woman" more than "True Woman". Reflecting the ideals of both "Real Women" and "Real Women," Godey's considers mother as important in preserving the memory of the American Revolution and in securing its legacy by upgrading the next generation of citizens.
Maps Cult of Domesticity
Influence
The Cult of Domesticity influenced the participation of women in the labor market in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "Real Women" should be devoted to unpaid household work and refrain from paid and market-oriented work. As a result, in 1890, 4.5% of all married women "worked well," compared to 40.5% of single women. The full financial dependence of women on their husbands is proving to be catastrophic when wives lose their husbands for death or desertion and are forced to defend themselves and their children. This division between domestic and public spaces has an effect on the strength and status of women. In society as a whole, especially in the political and economic arena, the power of women decreases. But inside the house, they gain a symbolic power.
The implications of this ideological law include the passage of protective labor legislation, which also limits women's employment opportunities outside the home. This law, as well as subsequent Supreme Court decisions such as Muller v. Oregon, is based on the assumption that women's primary role is mother and wife, and that women's non-domestic work should not interfere with their primary function. As a result, limited working women's hours and night work for women are prohibited, essentially harming many female workers of their work and excluding them from many jobs.
The Cult of Domesticity "privatizes" the choice of women to work, for education, to voice opinions, or to support reform. The argument of significant biological differences between the sexes (and often the inferiority of women) leads to the assertion that women are not able to effectively participate in politics, commerce, or public services. Women are considered more suitable to be parents. Also, because of the expected behavior, women are assumed to make better teachers of younger children. Catharine Beecher, who instigated the importance of education and nurturing, once said, "The great mission of women is to train immature, weak, and stupid [child] creatures to obey the law of God... first in the family, then at school, then in that neighborhood, then in that country, then in the world.... "One of the first public works for women was teaching. One estimate says that, with the growth of public education at the northern level of the state, a quarter of all women born in native Massachusetts in the years between 1825 and 1860 were schoolteachers at some point in their lives.
Connection to women's movement
Proponents of women's rights in the late 18th and early nineteenth centuries, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, and Harriet Martineau, were widely accused of disrupting the natural order and criticized as unfeminine. "They are only semi-women, mental hermaphrodites," writes Henry F. Harrington at Ladies' Companion . However, after the Jacksonian Era (1812 to 1850) saw an expansion of voting rights for almost all white men in the United States, many women believed it was their chance to increase civil liberties. The early feminist opposition to many of the values ​​promoted by the Cult of Domesticity (especially regarding women's suffrage, political activism, and legal independence) culminated in the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.
Susan M. Cruea postulates that although the "Cult of True Womanhood" imposes many social restrictions that take women's rights and freedoms, it still lays the groundwork for the further development of feminism by crediting women with moral authority that implicitly empower them to extend their moral influence in outdoors. The ideal woman is expected to act as a status symbol for men and reflect the richness and success of her husband, and is to create babies and nurse them for her successful husband's inheritance will continue, but he is also seen as an "Angels in the House" whose purpose is to guide his family morally. Due to the perceived important role, this ideology is printed on girls at a very young age; these girls are taught to appreciate their virginity as "the 'expensive pearls' which are their greatest asset" and to develop skills for managing the household and children behind, but they are also taught to see themselves as "the pillar of strength and virtue "who is the key not only in providing a good image to her husband but in raising a boy who will have a direct impact on the nation's success.
During the Progressive Era, the ideals of New Women emerged in response to the Cult of True Womanhood. The New Lady, often associated with the voting movement, represents an ideal of feminism that strongly opposes Cult of True Womanhood values. With the demands set forth in the Sentiment Declaration, written at the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, women finally obtained ratification of constitutional amendments and the right to vote in 1920. After emancipation, the New Women could be identified as "smoking-cigarettes," lipstick and rouged , jazz-dancing, a type that uses birth control known as the 'modern girl' or flapper. "
World War II brought the restructuring of the labor market as women valiantly stepped into the war effort in front of the house. World War II was not just a civil war, but the mobilization of its brothers, both men and women were encouraged to serve their country and fight for democracy. In the post-World War II era, many of the ideas of "Cult of Domesticity" were emphasized again when American society sought to integrate veterans and emphasized the resurrection of family life. As troops return home, men are encouraged to live a family life and enter a friendly marriage, bringing together brothers and sisters who help defeat fascism abroad. Veterans return home to become heads of families and women who have been engaged in high-paying, high-skilled war work are being pushed back home. The restoration of private life is central to this era. Antikomunisme compose most of American life, emphasizing a free enterprise system that brings the period of economic prosperity and consumer culture.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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