The Cult Of True Womanhood And The Cult Of True Womanhood

Thesis: A “true women” in the 19th Century was one who was domestic, religious, and chaste. These were virtues established by men but enforced and taught by other women. Women were also told that they were inferior to men and they should accept it and be grateful that someone just loved them.

The magazine Ladies Repository: A Monthly Periodical Devoted to Literature, Arts, and Religion is a magazine that was published in 1800 and was targeted towards young women. The magazine was a way to help teach and encourage women of the time on how to properly fit in and behave according to the rules that society had placed on them. It taught them how to be considered an ideal, cultured woman with high morals and spiritual standards. Although many readers today would argue that the teachings and ideas taught by this magazine are extremely outdated and outrageously sexist, one must realize that this was society’s standard for women during the 1800’s.

The “cult of domesticity” is a social system made up of middle-class American Women in the Nineteenth-century that were confined completely at home. This had privatized women’s roles for work, education, and voicing opinions. This gave women a disadvantage unqualified to participate in the realms of politics, commerce, or public service. Women’s roles were viewed by society as raising children, tend to housekeeping, and providing a home in a state of good health and virtue. Being restricted by the cult of domesticity, this encouraged a lot of women to form communities in their homes, to express their moral bravery separate from men in the communal realm. Women became successful in writing, developing their own personal voices, and opinions

The Cult of Domesticity was an era best known for its symbolization for womanhood. The women who followed these standards tended to be generally literate and lived in the northeast of the country. Women were the center of the lifestyle and were expected to live by different roles. They needed to be a loving parent to their children and raise them to the best of their ability. The women were also expected to religious and devote themselves to Christ. Lastly they needed to pure and be the perfect wife for their husbands do whatever they pleased. True Women were to hold the four virtues: Piety, Purity, Submission and Domesticity.

When thinking of gender roles in society, stereotypes generally come to mind. Throughout history these stereotypes have only proven to be true. Major historical events have had a huge impact on the way men and women are seen and treated. In this way, women have always been secondary to males and seen as the fragile counterparts whose job is to take care of the household and most importantly, be loyal to her husband no matter the circumstance. Gender roles throughout history have greatly influenced society. The slow progress of woman’s rights throughout humanities led to an explosion of woman’s rights throughout the 20th century and that trend will only continue on into the rest of the 21st century.

housewife, to stay at home. This is my explanation of the essay, "The Cult of

Gender and the ways gender is portrayed in society varies from culture to culture. Gender roles have changed drastically, especially during the 20th century and continue to evolve to this day. For years now there have been preconceived notions about genders and the roles each one should play in society, home, workplace, etc. Most times gender roles are associated with stereotypes and previous gender roles. Gender role plays different parts in religion, culture, society, time periods, countries, etc. Women rights and power varies in time and location and it is very interesting to look at the events, cultures, and customs that were taking place in that particular time period to get a better idea of the gender role concept.

The cult of true womanhood or cult of domesticity was a way of life and thinking about women and womanhood that hit its peak around 1820 to 1860. This ideology was perpetuated by both men and women of the time period. It was a harsh separation of men and women’s roles and their spheres of influence, women’s domain was the home, and men’s was the outside world. Women in the cult of domesticity were focused primarily on four ideals, purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness. The first ideal, purity came from the idea that women were passionless creatures.

In the beginning God created man and woman, however, this creation has resulted in years of gender inequality. Since the beginning of time, men have had more rights and freedom than women. The two sexes have biological differences, however, these biological differences have somehow resulted in different gender roles and ideals. Gender is a social construct that was created to make society feel comfortable by having order. This social construct is constantly supported through films, media, and even education.

The Forerunner was a monthly journal edited and written by Charlotte Perkins Gillman which sought to encourage women to think independently in hopes of strengthening the movement of women's rights against the predominantly male run society of the 1900’s. It ran for seven volumes, starting with the November 1909 issue and ceased publication shortly before 1917. In this article, Gillman, known for her defiant attitude towards patriarchy, reveals the motives which inspired her to write The Yellow Wallpaper where she provides background information with a sincere address to prior hardships and personal struggles with mental illness, particularly nervous breakdowns with a melancholic tendence heavily influenced by the mistreatment of a dismissive

Since the beginning of time, gender has played a big role in how one acts and how one is looked upon in society. From a young age children are taught to be either feminine or masculine. Why is it that gender plays a big role in the characteristics that one beholds? For centuries in many countries it has been installed in individual’s heads that they have to live by certain stereotypes. Women have been taught to be feeble to men and depend on them for social and economical happiness. While men have been taught to be mucho characters that have take care of their homes and be the superior individual to a woman. For the individuals who dare to be different and choose to form their own identity whether man or woman, they are out casted and

My Gender Development Gender identity is the measure by which one identifies as being masculine and feminine, and it is often shaped early in life. Gender varies across cultures over time, and over the individual’s term of life. However, the formation of “gender identity is not clearly understood, many factors have been indicated as the ones changing the gender development” (Boundless, 2014). This factors are described as theories, and throughout these theories we can discover stage by stage the approaches to gender development.

Joan Scott, whose essay Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis appears just a few years prior to Kerber’s, demonstrates that by drawing from other diverse disciplines (anthropology, cultural studies, economics, literary criticism) historians can show how knowledge, power, and indeed identity can be shaped by the category of gender. Echoing other poststructuralists of the time, Scott tells us that gender is, in point of fact, part of a larger system of relationships, and it links together the forces of ideology, normative behavior, political action, and identity formation. Scott breaks with tradition and suggests that gender is defined in relation to other cultural and ideological forms and not tied to any biological origins, or mired in the rubric of sexual roles; that it is in effect, not about some essential attributes but about its social function within an historical period.

From the very beginning of our lives, gender is the most outstanding difference that distinguishes one from another, yet gender is much more complex than we would

3. Address (1) Definitions of Sex and Gender (2.) Historical views, religious views, & sociological views on gender (3.) Viewpoints on functionalist & conflict theory on gender inequality