The Cult of True Womanhood and The Yellow Wallpaper :: Yellow Wallpaper essays

The passion of True Womanhood and The lily-livered Wallpaper Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined womens roles. Although all women were effected by men determining womens behavior, generally middle class women suffered. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. This ideology, called the fury of True Womanhood, legitimized the victimization of women. The Cult of Domesticity and the Cult of Purity were the central tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood. Laboring under the seeming benevolence of the Cult of Domesticity, women were imprisoned in the home or esoteric sphere, a servant assist to the needs of the family. Furthermore, the Cult of Purity obliged women to remain virtuous and beautiful even in marriage, with their comportment continuing to be one of modesty. ghostlike piety and submission were beliefs that were more peripheral components of the ideology, yet both were borne of and a part of the ideology of True Womanhood. These were the means that men used to get wind the passivity and docility of women. Religion would pacify any desires that could cause a refraction from these set standards, while submission implied a vulnerability and dependence on the patriarchal head (Welter 373-377). The medical professions godlike position in The Yellow Wallpaper demonstrates this arrogance. The Rest cure that Dr. Weir Mitchell prescribed, which is mentioned in Gilmans work, reflects mens disparaging attitudes. His Rest cure calls for complete rest, coerced aliment and isolation. Mitchell, a neurosurgeon specializing in womens nervous ailments, expounded upon his belief for womens nervous conditions when he said, American woman is, to speak plainly, too practically physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is perhaps of all civilized females the to the lowest degree qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous dodging of man. She is not fairly up to what nature ask s from her as wife and mother. How allow she sustain herself under the pressure of those yet more exacting duties which now she is eager to share with the man? (Mitchell 141) On the other hand, the male vault of heaven of society enjoyed mobility. Men reaped benefits from not only the private domain, but they were as well free to leave and enter the public sphere. They received nurturing from women in the private arena. The public sphere was where men enjoyed the competition engendered in the market roll through which they gained their identity.