Cult of Domesticity

(noun)

A prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes regarding the roles of women during the nineteenth century in the United States and Great Britain.

Related Terms

Examples of Cult of Domesticity in the following topics:

  • Women and Democracy

    • During the early nineteenth century, women were mainly relegated to the private sphere through the "cult of domesticity."
    • The "cult of domesticity" was an ideal of womanhood that was prominent during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
    • Women of this era were generally pushed to the sidelines as dependents of men, without the power to bring suit, make contracts, own property, or vote.
    • During the era of the "cult of domesticity," women tended to be seen merely as a way of enhancing the social status of their husbands.
    • Portrait of Angelina Emily Grimké, one of the Grimké sisters who called for women to engage in antislavery reform.

  • Domesticity and "Domestics"

    • The cult of domesticity or cult of true womanhood was a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the nineteenth century in the United States and Great Britain.
    • Part of the separate spheres ideology, the cult of domesticity identified the home as women's "proper sphere. " Prescriptive literature advised women on how to transform their homes into domestic sanctuaries for their husbands and children.
    • Magazines which promoted the values of the cult of domesticity faired better financially than competing magazines which offered a more progressive view in terms of women's roles.
    • The cult of domesticity affected married women's labor market participation in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.
    • Early feminist opposition to the values promoted by the cult of domesticity culminated in the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and later influenced the second wave of feminism.

  • The Family Economy: Women and Children

    • The "cult of domesticity" was a term for the prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the nineteenth century in the United States and Great Britain.
    • The cult of domesticity revolved around women being the center of the family; they were considered, "the light of the home."
    • Magazines that promoted the values of the cult of domesticity faired better financially than competing magazines that offered a more progressive view in terms of women's roles.
    • With a circulation of 150,000 by 1860, Godey's reflected and supported the ideals of the cult of true womanhood.
    • Godey's Lady's Book was a highly influential women's magazine that reinforced the values of the cult of domesticity.

  • Women in the Republic

    • During the time of the new US Constitution and the development of the new Republic, women were widely considered inferior to men.
    • The New Jersey constitution of 1776 enfranchised all adult inhabitants who owned a specified amount of property.
    • One aspect the democratic ideals of the Revolution drastically changed was the roles of women.
    • The "cult of domesticity," a new ideal of womanhood that emerged around this time, rose from the reality that a 19th-century middle-class family did not have to make what it needed in order to survive, as did previous families.
    • As Eliza Wilkinson of South Carolina explained in 1783, "I won't have it thought that because we are the weaker sex as to bodily strength we are capable of nothing more than domestic concerns.

  • Cult

    • The Christian counter-cult movement is a social movement of Christian ministries and individual Christian counter-cult activists who oppose religious sects thought to either partially or entirely fail to abide by the teachings of the Bible.
    • In the 1930s, cults became the object of sociological study in the context of the study of religious behavior.
    • Cults, for Becker, were small religious groups lacking in organization and emphasizing the private nature of personal beliefs.
    • Their motivations, the roles they play in the anti-cult movement, the validity of their testimony, and the narratives they construct, are controversial.
    • Jim Jones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a cult that committed a mass murder-suicide in 1978.

  • The Church-Sect Typology

    • Cults are also more likely to be led by charismatic leaders than are other religious groups and the charismatic leaders tend to be the individuals who bring forth the new or lost component that is the focal element of the cult.
    • Cults, like sects, often integrate elements of existing religious theologies, but cults tend to create more esoteric theologies from many sources.
    • As cults grow, they bureaucratize and develop many of the characteristics of denominations.
    • Some denominations in the U.S. that began as cults include: Christian Science, and The Nation of Islam.
    • Most religious people would do well to remember the social scientific meaning of the word cult and, in most cases, realize that three of the major world religions originated as cults, including: Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism.

  • Architecture in Mesopotamia

    • Domestic and public architecture in Mesopotamian cultures differed in relative simplicity and complexity.
    • To provide a natural cooling effect, courtyards became a common feature in the Ubaid period and persist into the domestic architecture of present-day Iraq.
    • One of the most remarkable achievements of Mesopotamian architecture was the development of the ziggurat, a massive structure taking the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels, with a shrine or temple at the summit.
    • Rather, only priests or other authorized religious officials were allowed inside to tend to cult statues and make offerings.
    • However, even early palaces were very large and ornately decorated to distinguish themselves from domestic architecture.

  • Dura-Europos

    • Its location on the edge of empires made for a co-mingling of cultural traditions, much of which was preserved under the city's ruins.
    • It is the best preserved of the many ancient synagogues of that era that have been uncovered by archaeologists.
    • Domus ecclesiae emerged in third century Rome and are closely tied to domestic Roman architecture of this period, specifically to the peristyle house in which the rooms were arranged around a central courtyard.
    • The earliest archaeological traces of the Roman Mithras cult found within the temple are from between 168 and 171 CE, which coincides with the arrival of Lucius Verus and his troops.
    • The surviving frescoes, graffiti and dipinti (which number in the dozens) are of enormous interest to the study of the social composition of the cult.

  • The Middle Kingdom

    • The End of the Eleventh Dynasty and the Rise of the Twelfth Dynasty
    • He reigned for 51 years and restored the cult of the ruler, considering himself a god and wearing the headdresses of Amun and Min.
    • Senusret instead appears to have focused on domestic issues, particularly the irrigation of the Faiyum.
    • Domestically, Senusret has been given credit for an administrative reform that put more power in the hands of appointees of the central government.
    • Statue head of Sensuret III, one of the kings in the Twelfth Dynasty.

  • Tariffs

    • Protective tariffs: Tariffs levied in order to reduce foreign imports of a product and to protect domestic industries.
    • When the tariff is imposed, the domestic price of the good rises to Pt.
    • Now, more of the good is provided domestically; instead of producing S, it now produces S*.
    • However, if the world price is higher than the domestic price, a tariff will not change the price or quantity consumed of a good.
    • When a tariff is levied on imported goods, the domestic price of the good rises.