The Revival of the Cult of Domesticity

Just what we all need: another cult... The Bible-based teachings of the great patriarchy movement are not cultic enough for them... They have to prop them up with the ideology of culture, since it has more to do with culture than it does with Christianity.

They can't even come up with anything original. It's all Pre-Civil War retread.





From The Nineteenth Century "Cult of the Lady"

The nineteenth century, most of which historians have designated as the Victorian Age, was an era in which the idealization of women was developed into an art. No longer were women enjoined to simply live out their lives in dutiful labor for their families. Instead, an intricate and complicated ideology promoting the sacredness of hearth and home developed and came into its own during the years between 1830 and 1860. Women's lives for the rest of the nineteenth and on into the twentieth centuries came to be defined by and compared to this idea.

Women's fashions and the "cult of the Lady" reflected this ideology of domesticity. Although only wealthy women could aspire to be truly fashionable, the development of periodical literature which specialized in the "female concerns" of fashion, etiquette, and the home came to disseminate the current mode to an ever increasing and literate audience. Furthermore, these magazines, such as Godey's Ladies Book, presented the domestic ideal to which many aspired but only the upper and middle classes could actually attain.

Sometime during the late 1820's and early 30's, "Home" became the catchword of the day. Home became the haven from the rough world for men and children and was maintained by the smiling demure thing in spreading skirts and with folded hands. In her book on the developing technologies of housework, Ruth Schwartz Cowan remarks that the whole transition into industrialized society had a great impact upon the behavioral, moral, emotional, and political consequences of the ideology of the home. She concludes:

`Home' came to be associated with a particular sex, `women'; with a particular emotional tone, `warmth'... and with a particular form of behavior, `passivity'; while at the very same time, `work' became associated with `men', `hardheartedness', `excitement', `aggression', and `immorality.'...

...Although "cult of domesticity" is generally attributed to the Victorian era, it was no longer quite as prevalent in the years following the Civil War. Social upheaval moderated in varying degrees the adherence to the ideology. Although many women still thought of themselves as ladies, the woman of the "Gilded Age" was no longer tied to the home in the same way her sister of twenty years before was. By the late 1860's, the fashionables gave up their spreading skirts for bustles and the curiass form which delineated the female figure to a degree not seen since the 1810's.

The "cult of domesticity" and the "lady" provided a sense of security for many nineteenth century Americans. In that rapidly changing industrial era, the engendering of a safe haven guarded by a quiet female seemed the epitome of security. The raising of this vision to an ideology uplifted the mundane domestic duties of the housewife to a realization of the beauty of women's seperate sphere. Although in order to live this life a woman needed to be supported by a man, her task of providing a home elevated her social role. Indeed, by her very words, actions, an d dress, she could convey the status of her family. The "cult of domesticity", though it was pervasive in the thirty years before the Civil War, became an integral part of the history of women in America.

READ the full ARTICLE HERE.

Revealing Necklines for Women and Effeminate Clothing for Boys (by today's standards)

Victorian Necklines

even the gowns of the upper class during the Victorian Era was too revealing! (in my opinion ... you do not have to agree)

Egads ... haven't these folks looked at those gowns!?!?

From Fashion-Era:

All this exposure was restricted to the upper and middle classes. Victorian working class women would never have revealed so much flesh. The décolleté style meant that the shawl became an essential feature of dresses. In the early Victorian years time corsets also lost their shoulder straps and a fashion for producing two bodices, with a closed décolletage for day and a décolleté one for evening.

may be their definition of modesty and mine are two different things

I perceive the gowns in the Victorian Era of the wealthy to be very, very, very revealing!








Effeminate Dress for Boys

there are some that want to crucify some women for wearing slacks today, but in the Victorian Era, little boys were clothed in dresses!

many little boys of the Victorian Era appear feminine by today's standards

out West there were many women that wore slacks simply because it made more sense in doing the work that they did

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Victorian Boys Wore Dresses and Had Long Hair

From "Commonly Held Misconceptions about Historic Costume" from "The Clothesline" website:

Why did they dress little boys like little girls?

Though adult roles were extremely gender specific, small children's clothing was not...

Many images of small boys from the Victorian period and earlier appear feminine by today's standards. Some images show young boys in dresses almost identical to those of girls... Boys' clothing was not dissimilar to women's fashions of the nineteenth century. It was not unusual in the nineteenth century for small girls to wear bloomers, or pants beneath their dresses as well...

Like many other aspects of dress, the visible implicators of masculine and feminine have changed over time. The color schemes we associate with the identification of an infant's gender did not develop until the early to mid twentieth century... Finally, the use of pants for infant and toddler boys could create additional difficulties as fasteners commonly used today (snaps, zippers and velcro) were not available until the twentieth century. In the time before a child was potty trained, dresses would provide cover and access to diapers.

Until recent decades parents were not as concerned with declaring a child's sex... Gender would not need to be advertised to others who most likely knew the parents and the gender of the child already.

Beliefs about the nature of children also supported the idea that children developed personalities and individual traits as they grew, but were not necessarily born with them. Until babies grew into toddlers (2 or 3 years old) gender would not play a role in their lives. This may have been partially due to the high rates of infant mortality. This lack of individuality may have been a form of psychological protection for parents facing the likelihood of losing infant children.

Read the entire "Myths" online article here.

[Note: This blog host has an old photo of her grandfather wearing a dress and with long hair! He grew up to be very masculine: a coal, clay and sulfur miner; and later a welder. No gender ambiguity whatsoever!]