Sabrina Jones
Hist 1700
Document Analysis Unit 4.
06/24/2015
The cult of domesticity had a huge impact on the debate over woman’s place in
antebellum American society. Although this was mainly only true for those that were a
part of America’s white, middle and upper class societies. There were four main
characteristics that a proper young woman was expected to cultivate. These
characteristics were piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. These ideals were
found everywhere in publication and were also passed along in families and society. It
was believed that women needed the security and protection that a man provided as
she could not provide them for herself. Women were believed to be weak and fragile
and it was believed keeping them at home and in charge of domesticity would keep
them both healthy and sane. Women were believed to be inferior to man both physically
and intellectually and these beliefs were thought of as proved through science. While
some women thought of these beliefs as wrong, many who had been raised with these
beliefs thought of them as entirely true, this would have made it a lot harder to change
cultural opinion.
There were many similarities between the Declaration of Independence and the
Declaration of Sentiments. The Declaration of Sentiments starts with “We hold these
truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal;”, so the beginnings
of each document are virtually the same. This is true for many other parts of the
Declaration as well as the form of the Declaration of Independence was followed quite
closely. Both documents detail numerous injustices that were being experienced, the
injustices that caused a need for the declarations to be written. The Declaration of
Sabrina Jones
Hist 1700
Document Analysis Unit 4.
06/24/2015
Sentiments stated that women were oppressed and that they should be allowed the
rights and privileges that should belong to them as citizens of the United States. I
believe it was written this way because the similarities almost seemed to give the
Declaration of Sentiments more power. In my opinion reading something written so
similarly to the Declaration of Independence would have been much more influential
with the culture at the time in comparison to something original that had been drafted by
a woman.
The cult of domesticity was hugely influential in the arguments for
women’s rights. The cult of domesticity made it seem as if women were being protected
rather than having their rights infringed upon. The world of business and industry was
seen as competitive, immoral, and unstable and keeping away from this type of
environment was made out to be in the best interest of women everywhere. According
to the notes of Professor Catherine Lavender it was believed that intellectual activity or
really any form of activity at all reduced a woman’s life force, namely the blood that was
needed in the reproductive organs. With this belief it almost makes sense that women
needed to be sheltered from life’s harsh realities by staying home and perfecting
domesticity. All kinds of people in authority positions, including physicians, believed this
information to be true. It is likely that, because of the culture at this period in time, many
women believed they had all of the rights they needed and that men were doing a much
better job at deciding just how many rights they needed.