Chapter 4 Section 3
The Cult of Domesticity
In the Early 19th Century
Women referred to their
limited role in society as
The Cult Of Domesticity.
In this time period women
were unable to work and
be independent after they
were married, after
marriage women were
restricted to housework
and/ or childcare.
In the early 1800s women were not allowed to
sit on juries even if they were taxpayers.
In addition any property/money a woman
acquired prior to her marriage went to her
husband once she was married.
If a woman’s marriage were to break up she
did not have the right to keep custody of the
children.
As of 1850 only one in five women had eared
wages before getting married and only one in
ten single women worked outside of the home.
If a woman were to attain a job outside of the
home her wages would be half of those given
to a man doing the same job.
Women Abolitionists
 An Appeal to Christian
Women of the South,
written by Angelina Grimke
from SC (1836)
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Instructed women to
“overthrow this horrible
system of oppression and
cruelty”
Women abolitionists:

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
Raised $
Distributed literature
Collected signatures for
petitions to Congress

Temperance Movement – the effort to prohibit
the drinking of alcohol

American Temperance Society founded in 1826

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
Held rallies
Made pamphlets
Declined the consumption of alcohol

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Until 1820s American girls had few educational
opportunities open to them after elementary school
Troy Female Seminary – opened in 1821 by Emma Willard in
Troy, NY

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Became nation’s first academically rigorous schools for girls
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary – 1837 by Mary Lyon in
South Hadley, MA
1837 – Ohio’s Oberlin College became nation’s first fully
coeducational college (admitted 4 women to its degree
program)
1831 – white Quaker, Prudence Crandall, opened a girls
school in Canterbury, CT and admitted a black girl. Caused
too much controversy, so it was changed to an all black
girls school. This caused even more protest against
desegregated education that the school was closed

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Educated women began to work for
health reforms by the mid-19th century
Elizabeth Blackwell
1849 - first woman to graduate from
medical college
 Opened the New York Infirmary for Women
and Children

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Women were often unhealthy because
of their lack of bathing, exercise, and
restrictive corsets that made it hard for
them to breathe
Amelia Bloomer
Publisher of a temperance newspaper
 Rebelled by wearing loose-fitting pants
tied at the ankles covered by a short skirt:
“bloomers”
 Men were outraged by Bloomer’s trend of
women wearing pants

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Reform toward women’s rights grew as opportunities for women
increased with industrialization
1848- Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the
Seneca Falls Convention where the Declaration of Sentiments
was formed.


Mimicked the Declaration of Independence, addressing the faults of
man against woman
300 men and women came to the convention at Wesleyan
Methodist Church and almost all parts of the declaration were
voted unanimously in favor of a positive change for women

All parts excluding the right to vote

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Worked to improve social
conditions in the mid-19th
century
Sojourner was a slave for 30
years
She traveled the country
preaching and arguing for
abolition
1951- attended a women’s
rights convention and urged
men to give women their rights
Women were constant workers
just like men, therefore they
deserve the same rights