Sarah Josepha Hale in Godey's Lady book by W.G. Armstrong
According to Barbara Welter, author of the influential essay on this topic, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860" (American Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, Part i (Summer 1966), pp. 151–174), True Women were to hold the four cardinal virtues:
Piety – believed to be more religious and spiritual than men
Purity – pure in heart, mind, and body
Submission – held in "perpetual childhood" where men dictated all actions and decisions
Domesticity – a division between work and home, encouraged by the Industrial Revolution; men went out in the world to earn a living, home became the woman's domain where a wife created a "haven in a heartless world" for her husband and children...
These ideals and virtues were elaborated on and stressed on by ministers in sermons, and physicians in popular health books. Godey's Lady's Book, which by 1860 had 150,000 subscribers for three dollars a year, was the most widely circulated women's magazine in the United States. It was edited by Sarah Josepha Hale, who strove to spread her concerns for feminine values. The magazine encouraged motherhood as a religious obligation; mothers played a crucial role in preserving the memory of the American Revolution and in securing its legacy by raising the next generation of citizens. The magazine's paintings and pictures illustrated the four virtues, often showing women with children or behind husbands. Fashion was also stressed because a woman had to stay up to date in order to please her husband. Instructions for seamstresses were often included. Most importantly, Godey's Lady's Book proclaimed that, "The perfection of womanhood...is the wife and mother, the center of the family, that magnet that draws man to the domestic altar, that makes him a civilized being, a social Christian," and that, "The wife is truly the light of the home."
After the rise of feminism and the fight for women's rights, the cult of domesticity arose again in the 1950s when television began to present shows that depicted fictional families where the mother would stay at home with the children while the man went to work.
After the Jacksonian Period, 1812 to 1850, had granted universal white male suffrage, extending the right to vote to virtually all white males in America, women believed it was their opportunity for civil liberty. However, even after the Declaration of Sentiments was written at the Seneca Falls convention of 1848, the right to vote was not extended to women until 1920. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Domesticity
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