Comparison Of Republican Motherhood And The Cult Of Domesticity

When considering women’s equality in the United States, the average person considers examples such as the Suffragist movement at the turn of the twentieth century or the Feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These two movements did not just occur on a feminine whim. They were often curated by previous movements and expectations held for women that they felt was necessary to update and change, much to the chagrin of the traditionalists of their respective time periods. The same can be said about both Republican Motherhood and the Cult of Domesticity. While overlapping, the two movements have many nuanced differences. The first to appear, Republican Motherhood was the post-Revolutionary war movement for women. Higher expectation in knowledge and education was the main goal in order to raise better American citizens. In contrast, the Cult of Domesticity begins to develop after Andrew Jackson is elected as president. …show more content…
It emphasized independence of the self and also what is natural to man. An epitome of the ideology of Enlightenment can be seen from John Locke’s Two Treatise on Civil Government. This writing includes the statement that, “the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.” This type of thinking not only drastically changes political understanding, but also changes how the individual is viewed. Expanding to include even women, Jean-Jacque Rousseau wrote extensively about what he considered was appropriate for women. Women were incapable of being reliant on themselves and instead needed a husband for that support. Rousseau would not say that a woman is lower than man, but instead is better at domestic activities instead of in a public and political sphere. To him, a woman’s responsibility was to shape a man to be moral and