Cult Of True Womanhood also known as the Cult of Domesticity, is a term identifying a
nineteenth-century ideology that women's nature suited them especially for tasks associated with
the home. It identified four characteristics that were supposedly central to women's identity:
piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. The cult was first articulated in discussions of
women's nature and their proper roles and became prominent in most industrializing societies
around 1820; it reached its persuasive height by the 1890s in these areas, while in other
European societies it did not begin to gain influence until the turn of the century. Vestiges
remain with us today.
The cult dictated that True Women were the moral guardians of the family. They were
particularly appropriate for that role because they were spiritually pure-and therefore closer to
God. They remained pure because they stayed away from the degrading environment of the
outside world, which ruined innocence: moral purity could not withstand the brutality of a world
dominated by the unrestrained competition of the free enterprise system. This implied that, since
men were constantly participating in the world, they were not as pure as, and therefore were
spiritually inferior to, women. It was absolutely necessary for women to cling to the protection of
the home. If they left that haven, they lost their innocence, their moral superiority, and ultimately
their True Womanhood. Women thus gained their own sphere, which was entirely separate from
men's.
A True Woman's role in life was to perform the domestic chores of the household-or oversee
their performance by others (usually women) hired for that purpose. She prepared nutritious
meals, nurtured her children both physically and spiritually, comforted her husband and soothed
away the wounds of his encounters with the outside world, and stood as an invincible sentinel at
the portals of the home to keep worldly pollution from entering and despoiling the family.
The idea of True Womanhood was not new, but the self-conscious idea that women should
conform to a particular image did not begin to be articulated until the early nineteenth century,
when several historical developments prompted its appearance. Enlightenment philosophies
made women the conduits through which cultural values (e.g., freedom and social responsibility)
passed to future generations. American revolutionary rhetoric formulated that belief more
concretely. The idealization of motherhood known as Moral Motherhood or Republican
Motherhood emphasized women's natural piety as a basis for the job of instilling republican
virtues and attempted to entice women back to the home after their entry into political life during
the American Revolution. (See REPUBLICAN MOTHERHOOD.)
The rapid growth of industrialization in the nineteenth century also contributed to the notion that
women's special place was in the home. Industrialization moved men outside the home in pursuit
of a livelihood. Although in the past women had done a variety of work from farming and
husbandry to running inns and publishing newspapers, their traditional work-nurturing and its
related duties-took place within, or very close, to the home. Since that job was still essential, and
women had "always" done it, they were inevitably the ones who should remain in the home to
continue it.
Medical science's definition of women's nature reinforced the idea of their confinement. Doctors
believed that women were more fragile than men and that their frailty had to be protected
because they were, in effect, the wombs of the nation. Women, therefore, should remain in the
