The Journals of Martha E. McMillan

Understanding Martha in Light of Nineteenth-Century Womanhood Ideals (January –April1900) Courtney Raymond 2015 Two main womanhood ideals spanned the nineteenth and early twentieth century. True Womanhood and New Womanhood were distinct, starkly contrasting one another. Martha McMillan’s life bridges the two eras of womanhood, her writings illustrating her own subjectivity in light of the two ideals. The True Woman The Cult of True Womanhood defined the female ideal in antebellum America. The concept espoused the notion that “womanly virtue resided in piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity” (Welter 151). The nineteenth century expression of sexual stereotypes asserted that men were less religious, more brutish, and that women alone were truly religious. All other “virtues” followed from this piety. If a woman was pious, thinking most highly of God, then she would subsequently have access to all other virtues. Men were encouraged to seek a woman of piety, because it was the only way they could be sure that her purity was protected. Religion was a woman’s “divine right,” to which she was “peculiarly susceptible” (Welter 151). The idea was that men were less susceptible to religion and needed a woman to persuade them towards it. A woman’s purity, submissiveness, and domesticity were just as important to her character as was her piety. The common assumption, among both men and women, was that a woman could not be truly desirable unless she was truly pious. All other virtues extended from that one. If a woman was pious, she could also be pure. Societal ideas held that the absence of 176