Transcript The Cult of Domesticity

• Boys: on the board, make a list of
why men are better than women
• Girls: be silent
• Girls: respond to what you
see/read
– Where do these ideas come from?
The Cult of Domesticity
Scientific Sexism
Essential questions
• How have gender roles changed
since the turn of the century
(1890s-1920s)?
• Why is it important to understand
the journey of women at this time?
Objectives
• To understand gender roles
• To trace the changes in gender
roles
• To make connections between
immigrants, muckrakers, and
women writers
• To explore minority writers
What was the Cult of
Domesticity?
• It was a new ideal
of womanhood
arising from
changing
economics, as well
as women’s
magazines, advice
books, popular
culture, etc.
Victorian Era
• In Britain, while America
was experiencing the
progressive (or Gilded
era)
• Queen Victoria
– 1837-1901
• Period of peace,
prosperity, national selfconfidence
• Characterized by strict,
reserved morality
• Growing middle class led
to increasingly
compartmentalized life
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
• More women in the workforce, but few
women actually supported themselves.
• Young women who were working were
often expected to turn their wages over to
their parents, and wives were expected to
turn wages over to their husbands.
• Women who were not in the workforce
were burdened with domestic duties.
• Neither marriage nor work really
loosened the boundaries placed on
women; each situation simply offered
a different set of rules.
Spheres, sexism
• Creation of the “spheres”
–Men (outside world)=
temptations, danger
–Women (home)= safe for
delicate creatures
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."
Ideal of Womanhood
•
•
•
•
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
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
• 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
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.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
&
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• 1860-1935
• Poet, Author
• The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
• Women and Economics (1898)
• Married Charles Stetson (1884)
– One child, daughter Katherine
• Married George Gilman (1900)
• Committed suicide 1935
Medical Context
• Nineteenth century doctors accepted the
idea that a woman's energy was centered
around her reproductive organs.
• When a woman suffered a medical problem,
doctors often diagnosed the problem as a
problem with channeling energy.
• Since reproduction was central to a
nineteenth century wife's life, doctors often
concluded that a "sick" woman was out of
sync with her reproductive organs.
• Upper class women made ideal patients.
Their husband's bank accounts were large,
and they were usually submissive and
obedient.
• “Hysteria.”
The Weir Mitchell
Treatment
• Gilman herself was treated for a similar
"nervous condition" as that of the narrator in
"The Yellow Wallpaper” after her daughter was
born.
• Her physician, Silas Weir Mitchell, was well
known in the United States for his "rest cure,"
also called the "Weir Mitchell Treatment."
• Mitchell believed, as a rule, that no harm was
done by rest. He often required patients to
stay in bed for six to eight weeks. Most female
patients were forbidden to sit up, sew, write,
or read.
• The inactivity drove Gilman, as well as many
other female patients, insane.
Homework
• Read The Yellow Wallpaper
(Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
• Pay attention to:
– Symbolism
– Narrator
– Imagery
– Mood
• Might be a reading quiz tomorrow
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