The Cult of Domesticity or Cult of True Womanhood (named such by its detractors) was a prevailing view among upper and middle class women during the nineteenth century, in Great Britain and the United States.
According to the ideals of the cult of domesticity, women were supposed to embody perfect virtue in all senses. Women were put in the center of the domestic sphere and were expected to fulfill the roles of a calm and nurturing mother, a loving a faithful wife, and a passive, delicate, and virtuous creature. These women were also expected to be pious and religious, teaching those around them by their Christian beliefs, and expected to unfailingly inspire and support their husbands.
They were held to four cardinal virtues:
1. Piety - believed to be more religious and spiritual than men
2. Purity - pure in heart, mind, and body
3. Submission - held in "perpetual childood" where men dictated all actions and decisions
4. Domesticity- a division between work and home, encouraged by the Industrial Revolution; men went out in the world to earn a living, home became the woman's domain where a wife created a "haven in a heartless world" for her husband and children.
People in the nineteenth century, both men and women, did not consider what women did as work, but as an effortless expression of their feminine natures.
After the rise of feminism and fight for women's rights, the cult of domesticity arose again in the 1950's when television began to present shows that depicted fictional families where the mother would stay at home with the children while the man went to work.
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