The following is an excerpt regarding the ideal 19th century woman, which historians have called the cult of true womanhood. If you read it in the light of the ongoing debate about gender roles, it has a familiar ring to it. Of particular note, this ideal could not be achieved by poor women or slaves. Thus it was a practice or a preference that was only possible from a position of privilege, not a principle that could be applied to all.

There has been some lively discussion in social media over the extent that headship and submission go beyond the home to opposite-gender interaction in general. For the record, I affirm male elders in the church. I believe Ephesians 5:22-33 still applies to marriage today. But I do not believe that the human race should be divided ontologically by gender into those who lead and those who follow. Being made in the image of God, which does include gender, is much more complex than that. I am also concerned that practices, which would fall under the heading of Christian liberty, are taught as principles, thus binding the consciences of believers.

Therefore, I concur with the concerns of the folks at the Mortification of Spin. (Read the posts here: Aimee #1, Carl, Todd, Carl #2, Aimee #2) I especially appreciate Aimee sticking her neck out and writing about this issue. I’ve had many concerns over the years, but I’ve been a chicken about expressing them. Maybe I haven’t looked in the right places, but I have the impression that women going against the status quo are not exactly welcomed with open arms.

One natural assumption is that I have been influenced by the present culture against my better judgment. I would agree that we are influenced by the culture more than we realize, but at the same time, I would argue that we are influenced not only by the present day but by strongly held, cultural ideas of the past.

The following is an excerpt regarding the ideal 19th century woman, which historians have called the cult of true womanhood. If you read it in the light of the ongoing debate about gender roles, it has a familiar ring to it. Of particular note, this ideal could not be achieved by poor women or slaves. Thus it was a practice or a preference that was only possible from a position of privilege, not a principle that could be applied to all.

Principle versus practice. Something worth keeping in mind.

[T]he nineteenth century image of the True Woman was both continuous and discontinuous with previous ideal or expectations. Some roles, such as subordination or domestic concerns, had a long heritage; other characteristics represented fairly dramatic changes. It was the insistence on rigid separation by gender, however, that was distinctive in nineteenth-century imagery, the assumption that men and women have radically different natures and should function in radically different spheres most of the time. (Men were, of course, present in homes, but it was not their natural habitat. Churches remained, at least in theory, a desirable setting for both sexes, and the one place outside the home where respectable women would appear, though not, of course, as leaders.)

Why did the cult of True Womanhood, with its idealized and distinctively female sphere of domesticity, arise and flourish in popular perspectives of nineteenth-century America? One major cause was social and economic change. America in the nineteenth century began an accelerated process of urbanization and industrialization…

When so much of the public sphere was changing, the home and the woman who presided over it seemed to be the one stable element left, the place where traditional values could be preserved and upheld. By its very separation from the public world, the home came to be seen as a refuge, a haven, a pillar of stability. Thus the private-public split that was beginning to characterize American society took on heavy emotional and value-laden overtones…

Furthermore the cult of domesticity was simply not feasible for many poor women, especially immigrants and women of color, who had few opportunities to enjoy the private sphere and relative leisure assumed to be available for the True Woman for domestic duties. Significant numbers of American women had to enter the public sphere of employment as factory workers or domestics. Black women slaves had still less control over their own personal lives, let alone economic security… Many American women faced practical social and economic barriers that precluded their achievement of True Womanhood. Many did not share its assumptions and values or the ways those values were presumed to be manifested in women’s lives.

“You Have Stept Out of Your Place”: A History of Women and Religion in America, Susan Hill Lindley, Westminster John Knox Press, 1996, pp. 53-54, 56.

For additional reading:

The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860, Barbara Welter, 1966.
Total Truth, Chapter 12 – How Women Started the Culture War, Nancy Pearcey, Crossway, 2008.

Persis Lorenti is an ordinary Christian. She serves on her church’s women’s ministry team and is deacon for library/church resources. You can find her at Tried With Fire and Out of the Ordinary. This article appeared at her blog and is used with permission.