The historical fact of the “Cult of True Womanhood” – and the cult is still alive and well today

By Elizabeth Prata

*She would be another, better Eve, working in cooperation with the Redeemer, bringing the world back “from its revolt and sin.” 1*

Lori Alexander The Transformed Wife @godlywomanhood posted something the other day on a topic she often posts on: suffragism. Suffragism is defined as the advocacy of the extension of suffrage (as to women). Women who advocated for the right to vote were called suffragettes.

The 3 Big Moral/Social Justice Movements of the 1800s

Suffragism arose in the early 1800s as the Temperance Movement gained widespread momentum. The Temperance Movement was a moral movement urging societal change- that people (men) abstain from drinking alcohol. Another moral movement in the early decades of the 1800s overlapping with Temperance and Suffrage, was Abolition of slavery. Women were effective campaigners in the Temperance movement and soon began to campaign for the right to vote. They were effective in this also. They held protests, parades, pickets….

All this female hussy-type activity was jarring to many, and soon an anti-Suffrage movement sprang up. These were women (and men) who opposed the movement to give women the right to vote.

Anti-Suffragists’ Methods

These ‘antis’ wanted to get their position across but do so in a more genteel, ladylike way. So:

“They campaigned at country fairs by distributing bulletins while offering advice on such womanly subjects as first aid. Considered the “Heaven, Home and Mother crowd,” they held teas, fund-raising balls, and luncheons at hotels and women’s colleges, as opposed to the noisy parading, picketing, and public speaking promoted by suffragists. The “antis,” wearing their emblem of pink or red roses, campaigned quietly by circulating antisuffrage literature in the state legislative gallery.” Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

[As an aside, this reminds me exactly of Phyllis Schalfly’s method she used to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. See: Hulu’s series ‘Mrs. America’]

The antisuffrage movement was the birth of the Cult of True Womanhood. Historians acknowledge that it was based on the 4 moral virtues of piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. This was a real cult and a real movement and historically a fact.

The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society could be divided into four cardinal virtues-piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife-woman. Without them, no matter whether there was fame, achievement or wealth, all was ashes. With them she was promised happiness and power.” Barbara Welter, The Cult of True Womanhood 1820-1860, see below for source.

“Antisuffrage members alleged that the right to vote would not solve the problems of women and society. They opposed suffrage primarily because they believed in the “cult of true womanhood” (piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness) and in the separate sphere of the home. The apolitical association served to educate and to legitimize activism within the traditional female domain.” OKHistory.org

You note that though these ‘antis’ were opposed to women’s suffrage and scandalized by women protesting and marching and speechifying, the antis were hypocritical in their approach. IF they truly embodied “Godly Womanhood” they would have been content to remain at home and leave the anti-suffrage campaigning to the husband.

But they didn’t.

The Cult of True Womanhood was (and is) a real thing

The movement that arose in opposition to women’s suffrage in the latter decades of the 1800s and early 1900s was, as mentioned before, a moral one. It was named. Its name was “Cult of True Womanhood“. It was also called the “Cult of Domesticity”. Part of its ideology included the ‘separate spheres’ concept: that women dwelled on one sphere (the home) and men dwelled on another sphere (the world).

Is this beginning to seem familiar with a certain movement headed by certain females on social media today? It is now known as the Trad Wife movement.

Activism is Activism, Hypocrisy is Hypocrisy

The godly womanhood cultists back in the 1800s were activists just as much as the bolder ‘pro-suffrage’ activists were activists. Their methods differed, but they were ALL activists. The ‘True women’ simply applied a veneer of virtue over their activities and claimed the higher moral ground. Remember, the hallmark of the Cult of True Womanhood was and is “Piety, Purity, Submissiveness, and Domesticity.”

Interestingly, in addition to external pietism, and in addition to the internal hypocrisy in their approach, the Cult of True Womanhood anti suffragists also had at its center an unwieldy quandary. Believers in the cult said women are the moral arbiter of the home, not only capable but commanded to set standards for Christian Godly living, yet at the same time, women lacked the moral intelligence to make proper moral decisions when they vote.

See an example, an anti-suffrage tract from Ohio anti-Suffrage stated:

“It is unwise, unfair, and unjust to force upon a majority of women, a measure which is obnoxious to all their ideals of womanhood, in order that the wishes of a small minority may prevail.”

But that same tract goes on to say the following:

“It is a mistake to presume that all women will vote right on moral issues. Experience proves that many of the worst ills of social life are due to the influence of women of low ideals of right and wrong, or of degrading morals.”

History is more nuanced than our memories allow

An ideal, these women say, is the wife in the home, never straying outside it, presiding over serene domestic excellence. It is a moral ideal, not a biblical reality. The 1950s picture of ‘prefeminism’ life didn’t exist. If you want prefeminism life, go back before the Fall. The ideal presented by the Godly Womanhood Cultists is a figment. Their version of womanhood was hardly EVER the case then and it’s hardly ever the case now. We read from Jeanne Boydston :

Meanwhile, industrialization also forced free women in northern working-class households to labor for cash, as street vendors, tavern-keepers, boarding-house operators, paid domestic servants, garment workers, prostitutes, and a variety of other occupations. Young women from New England farms provided the nation’s first factory labor force in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, beginning in 1814. A surprising number of middle-class families also depended on the paid labor of the wives. 

Who could adhere to these impossible and largely imaginary eras of domestic perfection? Mostly white upper class women.

Although all women were expected to abide by the standards of true womanhood, in reality, it was predominantly White, Protestant, upper-class women who did so. Due to social prejudices of the period, Black women, working women, immigrants, and those who were lower on the socioeconomic ladder were excluded from the chance to ever be true paragons of domestic virtue.” Thought Co.

A wife should occupy herself only with domestic affairs-wait till
your husband confides to you those of a high importance-and do not
give your advice until he asks for it…if he is abusive, never retort.”

The Lady’s Token: or Gift of Friendship, 1848

History is complicated and our minds want to dispense with some of the more gritty realities-

This [wives’] work was vital to household economic survival. Only among the very wealthiest families were husbands’ incomes large enough to purchase everything a family needed to survive. In the poorest of families, wives scavenged the wharves and alleys for abandoned or unguarded food, fuel, and clothing. Even in middling families, a wife’s labor in keeping a garden, making clothes, economizing with food, and even producing some of the family’s furnishings (ottomans, pillows, mattresses) and equipment (like soap) enabled her household to maintain a comfortable standard of living on incomes that were often otherwise insufficient. Jeanne Boydston

If the middle or lower class wife’s activities seem familiar, it is because they were recounted as the Proverbs 31 wife’s full day of work. Martin Luther’s wife Katy Von Bora also spent hours upon hours a day doing these same activities so the household could survive economically.

Katharina immediately took on the task of managing the monastery’s vast holdings. She bred and sold cattle and ran a brewery to provide for their family, the numerous students who boarded with them, and her husband’ visitors. In times of epidemics, she operated a hospital with nurses, working alongside them. Luther called her the ‘boss of Zulsdorf’, after the farm they owned, and the ‘morning star of Wittenberg’ for her habit of rising at 4 a.m. … She thus assisted her husband with running their estate and directed renovations when necessary. Source

Were the Proverbs 31 wife or Katharina Von Bora not ‘godly women’?

The Bible does call for women to be at home primarily oriented toward the home! The word of God advocates for that. But HOW this plays out varies, and it is not, I repeat, not, the singular, narrow view that the historical Cult of True Womanhood promoted in the 1800s and it’s not the narrow view of ‘Trad Wives’ today. It’s not even the biblical view. Why?

Because Prov 31 woman and Katy Von Bora were Gospel centered, not Morality centered. That is the difference between a cult or trad wife, and a biblical wife. They ministered as whole women, in true service to the King, not in service to 4 ‘true woman’ or ‘trad wife’ virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. That is the difference. Biblical versus moral.

Lydia ran a business selling purple. Susannah was wealthy enough to support Jesus’ ministry AND travel with him. Priscilla made tents with her husband. Rachel’s job was a shepherdess. The Midwives of Egypt worked, the funeral mourners had jobs (Mark 5:38), Sheerah was a builder. And so on.

The 4 Virtues: Piety, Purity, Submissiveness, Domesticity

If this is beginning to seem familiar to you, this is the exact cult that Lori Alexander The Transformed Wife of @godlywomanhood is part of and promotes relentlessly.

I’ve mentioned earlier that the anti-suffragettes formed a moral movement, or a movement based on virtues. Granted, these morals were lifted from the Bible and are excellent virtues for women to have. But once you unhitch these virtues from the Gospel, they turn into serpents and slither away from context and truth to become external legalistic demands instead of internal virtues enhancing a Gospel-oriented life.

As with anything related to history, first, we always remember things more fondly than they actually were. Our historical memories might be sepia-tinged, flower laden soft memories, but the reality of womanhood at the time the Cult of True Womanhood was born was hardly that.

To the extent that white women from more prosperous households succeeded in embodying “true womanhood” in their own lives, they inevitably did so at the expense of other women, whose labor produced so many of the commodities and services of the perfectly domestic household. Here was the final paradox of nineteenth-century “true womanhood.” Jeanne Boydston

As godly women, we want to raise up younger women to enjoy marriage as a true Godly woman. We do so by teaching the whole woman all the doctrines of the Bible so that she will be stable and assured of her position in life: as a child of the king ministering to Him out of love and gratitude for His sacrifice on the cross. We do not extract preferred virtues from the Bible, turn them into a cult, and place these burdensome demands on women as moralistic ideals separate from the word of God as a movement on its own.

The Trad Wife movement may have a germ of a good idea at the center but like Jesus warned, woes to anyone who substitutes pietism for holiness, and moralistic externals for internal realities.

There is nothing new under the sun. The Cult of True Womanhood existed then and it exists now. Be warned that, as Shakespeare said, everything that glitters is not gold.

Further resources

Thought Co. – The Cult of Domesticity

PBS: The Cult of True Womanhood

Barbara Welter, The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860, American Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, Part 1 (Summer, 1966), pp. 151-174 (24 pages)

*footnote 1, quote at the top: from The Young Lady’s Book: A Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and Pursuits (Boston, 1830), p. 29.

*Pharishees term coined by Pastor Gabe Hughes