Nineteenth-century Americans believed that women had a particular propensity for religion. The modern young woman of the 1820s and 1830s was thought of as a new Eve working with God to bring the world out of sin through her suffering, through her pure, and passionless love.
Ideal Number Two: Purity:
Female purity was also highly revered. Without sexual purity, a woman was no woman, but rather a lower form of being, a "fallen woman," unworthy of the love of her sex and unfit for their company.
To contemplate the loss of one's purity brought tears and hysteria to young women. This made it a little difficult, and certainly a bit confusing, to contemplate one's marriage, for in popular literature, the marriage night was advertised as the greatest night in a woman's life, the night when she bestowed upon her husband her greatest treasure, her virginity. From thence onward, she was dependent upon him, an empty vessel without legal or emotional existence of her own. A woman must guard her treasure with her life. Despite any male attempt to assault her, she must remain pure and chaste. She must not give in, must not give her treasure into the wrong hands. The following is advice on how to protect oneself and one's treasure given by Mrs. Eliza Farrar, author of The Young Woman's Friend: "sit not with another in a place that is too narrow; read not out of the same book; let not your eagerness to see anything induce you to place your head close to another person's."
To ignore such advice was to court disaster. The consequences could be terrible--usually, in popular literature, a woman who allowed herself to be seduced by a man atoned for her sin by dying, most often in poverty, depravity, or intemperance. There were numerous stories about unwed mothers punished by God for their sin by losing their babies and going mad.
Ideal Number Three: Submissiveness
This was perhaps the most feminine of virtues. Men were supposed to be religious, although not generally. Men were supposed to be pure, although one could really not expect it. But men never supposed to be submissive. Men were to be movers, and doers--the actors in life. Women were to be passive bystanders, submitting to fate, to duty, to God, and to men.
Women were warned that this was the order of things. The Young Ladies Book summarized for the unknowledgeable, the passive virtues necessary in women: "It is certain that in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind are required of her."
Just in case she might not get the point, female submissiveness and passivity were assured for the nineteenth century woman by the clothing she was required to wear. Tight corset lacing closed off her lungs and pinched her inner organs together. Large numbers of under garments and the weight of over dresses limited her physical mobility.
Such views were commonplace. A number of popular sayings reiterated: "A really sensible woman feels her dependence. She does what she can, but she is conscious of her inferiority and therefore grateful for support." "A woman has a head almost too small for intellect but just big enough for love." "True feminine genius is ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependent; a perpetual childhood."
Ideal Number Four: Domesticity:
Woman's place was in the home. Woman's role was to be busy at those morally uplifting tasks aimed at maintaining and fulfilling her piety and purity.
Housework was deemed such an uplifting task. Godey's Ladies Book argued, "There is more to be learned about pouring out tea and coffee than most young ladies are willing to believe." Needlework and crafts were also approved activities which kept women in the home, busy about her tasks of wifely duties and childcare, keeping the home a cheerful, peaceful place which would attract men away from the evils of the outer world.
The Rights of the "True Woman":
And crown their champions with success.
