Amina Nuhanovic

American Civ.
Unit 4 Doc Analysis
October 25, 2015
The way the Cult of Domesticity shaped the debate over a woman's place in the
antebellum society is that it only gave women one choice, that the only place she will
succeed is at home. Women were starting to realize that being a stay at home wife or
mother were not her only options. The Cult of Domesticity basically gave women the
idea that there is everything possible wrong with them. They blamed menstruation for
everything and gave them a label that they were incapacitated to live daily life from it.
Women were feared that if they were pregnant and they got angry or did extra work that
God would punish them and make the baby disabled.
The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was very similar yet very different
from the Declaration of Independence. Whereas the Declaration of Independence stated
every right man got, and the Declaration of Sentiments stated every right that women
did not have. Although the opening paragraphs were so alike the rest of the body was
different. As it states in the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, He has
withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded menboth
natives and foreigners women finally realised that even uneducated men were getting
the right to vote, and even men who were foreign to the country were able to vote.
Women who actually cared about having a career and getting educated were not able to
because man controlled everything that they did. Women were considered civilly dead
once they got married. I think they made the Declaration of Sentiments creative, yet
with a lot of anger and emotion. I think they made it this way so that men would actually

listen since the first paragraph of the Declaration of Sentiments was almost identical to
the Declaration of Independence.
I think that the Cult of Domesticity influenced the arguments for women's rights
in many different ways. It says, If one, therefore, had a headache or stomachache, or
became irritable or faint, it was assumed that the problem was with the reproductive
system. Women were subject to only one disease, then. The male reproductive system
had no parallel degree of control over the male body. Men had headaches; women had
female complaints. Women were so degraded because of men, and they were made to
feel isolated. There were many reasons women fainted, just look at what they had to
wear back in those days, and if they felt irritable its because theyve had a long day and
need some peace and quiet. I am glad that society is completely 360 degrees from back
then because I would have had a hard time.

Works Cited
Catherine J. Lavender, Notes on The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood,
Prepared for Students in HST 386: Women in the City, Department of History, The
College of Staten Island/CUNY (1998),
https://csivc.csi.cuny.edu/history/files/lavender/386/truewoman.pdf

Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions

Woman's Rights Convention, Held at Seneca Falls, 19-20 July 1848
http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/seneca.html