Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...

home to the haven of comfort provided by his companion wife. 8 Woman’s sphere was
the intimate world of the home, commonly referred to as the “cult of domesticity.” 9 This
was a relatively new concept formulated in the Victorian period as middle class affluence
took husbands out of the family workshop and into the urban workplace. Woman’s work,
according to Christopher Lasch, was to specialize in rearing children and to provide
moral values and emotional solace for the family. 10
During the late nineteenth century, modern conveniences relieved mothers from
the traditional toils of harvesting and preparing food, and doing housework. The makers
of these conveniences may have intended to simplify a woman’s day and allow her more
time to care for her children, but that was not the reality. As many women had to replace
their live-in domestic help with machines, the homemaker actually had less help than
before. This dilemma was compounded in the 1890s as urban families deliberately
decreased their number of children. Since large families were no longer essential for
farm work, there was less help from the children as well. 11 Bearing and rearing fewer
8 The mid-nineteenth century was also the first era of marriages without parental consent or
planning. Christopher Lasch described this new state of marriage as “a union of individuals rather than a
union of two lineages.” Companionship and love became the new goals of legal unions instead of family
dynasties. “Life in the Therapeutic State” in Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage, and
Feminism, ed. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997), 162.
9 Elizabeth Pleck labels it the “empire of the mother” in “Family History: Gender Roles and
Relations,” Encyclopedia of American Social History, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993),
1950. Lasch describes this “cult” as revolving around a “new glorification of motherhood,” 95.
10 Lasch, 162.
11 Kerber and DeHart cite statistics that support the fact that “modern conveniences” actually
lengthened the woman’s workday, especially if she was also forced to work outside of the home.
“Gender,” 483. This era was also the beginning of a social hygiene that required more frequent bathing and
laundry, thus compounding housework. Lasch refutes the all-consuming time constraints of housework by
describing the barter economy of unpaid services based on the good will of extended family and friends in
the urban neighborhood. In his view, this system worked well until after World War II when the housewife
was completely on her own in the isolation of the suburbs. “The Sexual Division of Labor” in Women and
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