Virtues
According to historian Barbara Welter, the author of the influential essay on this topic, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860", True Women were to hold the four cardinal virtues:
- Piety – Religion was valued because unlike intellectual pursuits it did not take a woman away from her "proper sphere," the home, and because it controlled women's longings
- Purity – Virginity was seen as a woman's greatest treasure which she had to preserve until her marriage night
- Submission – True Women were required to be as submissive and obedient "as little children" because men were regarded as women's superiors "by God's appointment"
- Domesticity – A woman's proper sphere was the home where a wife created a refuge for her husband and children; Needlework, cooking, making beds, and tending flowers were considered proper feminine activities whereas reading of anything other than religious biographies was discouraged
The characteristics of a "true woman" were described in sermons and religious texts as well as women's magazines. In the United States, Peterson's Magazine and Godey's Lady's Book were the most widely circulated women's magazines and were popular among both women and men. Magazines which promoted the values of the Cult of Domesticity fared better financially than competing magazines which offered a more progressive view in terms of women's roles. With a circulation of 150,000 by 1860, Godey's reflected and supported the ideals of the Cult of True Womanhood. The magazine's paintings and pictures illustrated the four virtues, often showing women with children or behind husbands. It also equated womanhood with motherhood and being a wife, declaring that the "perfection of womanhood (...) is the wife and mother". The magazine presented motherhood as a woman's natural and most satisfying role, and encouraged women to find their fulfillment and their contributions to society strictly within the home. Reflecting the ideal of True Womanhood, Godey's considered mothers as crucial in preserving the memory of the American Revolution and in securing its legacy by raising the next generation of citizens. Fashion was also stressed because a woman had to stay up to date in order to please her husband. Instructions for seamstresses were often included.
Read more about this topic: Cult Of Domesticity
Famous quotes containing the word virtues:
“There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues made them great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm’s length.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)