Transcript The Cult of Domesticity

The Cult of Domesticity
Scientific Sexism
What was the Cult of
Domesticity?
• It was a new ideal
of womanhood
arising from
women’s
magazines,
advice books,
popular culture,
etc.
Godey’s Lady’s Book
• Most widely
circulated ladies
magazine in the US;
• Encouraged
motherhood as a
religious value;
– Paintings and pictured
depicted women in
each of the four
virtues;
– Fashion stressed to
make women
attractive to
husbands.
Godey’s proclaimed
• "The perfection of womanhood... is
the wife and mother, the center of
the family, that magnet that draws
man to the domestic altar, that
makes him a civilized being, a
social Christian."
• "The wife is truly the light of the
home."
Arose from New Middle Class
Post-Industrial Family
• 19th-Century middle class family did not
need to be self-sufficient
– Men worked producing goods and services
while wives and children stayed home
– The public world too rough for women, who
were weak and delicate and should stay
home;
– The family became insulated, with kin &
community lessening in importance
Ideal of Womanhood
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•
•
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Piety
Purity
Submissiveness
Domesticity
Piety
• Belief that women
had a propensity
for religion;
• Woman is the
new Eve, working
with God to save
the world through
her pure,
passionless love.
Purity and Virginity
• Her greatest treasure
– Once married, she has no legal or emotional
existence
– Her purity is a weapon, to keep men in
control of their sexual needs
– 19th century purity fetish
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•
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•
Limbs, not legs
White meat, not breast
Cover table and chair legs
Separate male and female authors
Stork and cabbage patch stories of babies
Submissiveness
• Women to be passive,
submissive to fate, duty,
God and men;
• Clothing emphasized
passivity
– Corsets closed off lungs and
pinched inner organs
– Large numbers of
undergarments and weight
of dresses limited mobility
– “A really sensible woman
feels her dependence. She
does what she can, but she
is conscious of her
inferiority and therefore
grateful for support.”
Truisms about Women
• “A woman has a head almost too
small for intellect but just big
enough for love.”
• “True feminine genius is ever
timid, doubtful, and clingingly
dependent; a perpetual childhood.”
Domesticity
• Housework is an
uplifting task
– Needlework and crafts
approved duties;
• Women make the
home a refuge for
men so that they can
escape from the
immoral world of
business and
industry
Scientific Sexism
• Women are physically
inferior:
– Physically smaller than men
– Less stamina—they faint
more
– They menstruate and are
physically incapacitated
every month
• Brought on temporary
insanity
– More delicate because their
female nervous system was
finer and more prone to
fatigue because of the
reproductive system
Scientific Sexism
• "It was as if the
Almighty, in creating the
female sex, had taken
the uterus and built up a
woman around it."
• Reflex irritation: any
imbalance, infection, or
fatigue would cause a
reaction elsewhere in the
body.
• If a woman was sick
anywhere, it was
assumed that the
problem originated in the
reproductive system.
Scientific Sexism
• Women are intellectually inferior
– Smaller brains than men
• Size of brain to body weight
– Abandoned when it was discovered that
female brain to body rate yielded a higher
ratio
• Brain weight to body height
– Female brain inferior and more
primitive than male brain
• Phrenology—the art of reading the skull
Scientific Sexism
• Human sexuality
– Human body has finite amount of
energy, which must be regulated
– Sexual instinct most primitive
– Sex strong in men but absent in
ladies
• Feared in women because they would be
like vampires and drain the man of his
energy
Scientific Sexism
• Women: Puberty to Menopause
– Women must channel their energies into
reproduction
• Discouraged from intellectual activity b/c blood
was needed for reproductive organ development
• Education took about 20% of women’s vital
energy
• Pregnant women must not strain brains or the
unborn child would be harmed
• Avoid strong emotions
Scientific Sexism
• A woman’s organs
must be bathed
occasionally with a
man’s vital force if
she is to remain
healthy.
• Spinsters and
celibates have
shorter lives and are
more prone to
insanity
Scientific Sexism
• Men: Puberty
– Men must focus their life force on getting
ahead in the world and must reserve sexual
energies;
– One ounce of semen = four ounces blood;
– Masturbation or frequent sex would lead to
insanity and death;
– Women’s indifference to sex was good for
men;
A Woman’s Rights
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 woman's rights a God will bless
And crown their champions with
success.
Works Cited
• http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/de
pt/history/lavender/386/truewoma
n.html;
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_o
f_True_Womanhood
• Most illustrations from Godey’s
Ladies’ Book