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Compare And Contrast The Cult Of Womanhood

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The Cult of Womanhood and Outside the Home Working Women were two groups that diversified greatly in the Antebellum Period due to the differences in social status, type of work, and treatment. Social status greatly differ amongst these two groups. Women who followed the Cult of Womanhood were the mothers and nurturers of the home. Many were considered as property and could be taken for granted by their husband because women were expected to do much of the household duties. Many women were white and claimed to take on the lowest jobs for the sake of the households. However, women working outside of the home were considered even lower than housewives. Many of these single women were people of color or the lower class. Many were single or slaves that never got …show more content…

Physical work was a major divider among these two groups. Domesticated housewives of the Cult of Womanhood often found themselves with being the standard stereotype of a wife at the time. Women found themselves serving the family and husband by cooking, cleaning, being a role model to children and public, teachers, and even nurses. These domestic jobs were either done within their own household or others’. Women who did not work at home did strenuous, low paying work under an owner, master, or employer. Many were completing tasks that equivalent the men’s task at the time such as wood chopping or hard work in mills and fields. This significant work difference in types of tasks displays the divide between the physical jobs they had to deal with. One had family household duties to please their husbands. The other had to work in order to earn a wage and a living for themselves in strenuous jobs. The women groups had treatment differences. Household wives were to obey their husbands at all times without question. He was the sole leader and owner of his wife during the time. He had control of the family, property, marriage, and even

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Most of the daughters and the wives of farmers were hired to do the harvesting and the households chores, but on the other hand there were women whose husbands “contracted their family labor in exchange for a place to stay.” (page 98) In the middle colonies, unlike the other colonies, most servants were women due to the fact that slavery was almost frowned upon amongst the “wealthy Quaker households.” (page 100) Women were allowed to buy and sell goods and property and can accumulate debt, which at the time was unheard of from women. (page 84)

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