Ramsey County History – Fall/Winter 1976: “Kate Donnelly and the ‘Cult of True Womanhood’”

Kate Donnelly and the ‘Cult of True Womanhood’
Author: Gretchen Kreuter

Ignatius Donnelly’s 1895 tribute to his late wife, In Memoriam. Mrs. Katharine Donnelly, praised her as a model of “true womanhood,” a 19th century “cult” of ideal femininity comprised of “purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness.” This essay explores the many contradictions inherent in this cult and in Donnelly’s adoption of it. The idealized woman of the cult bore little resemblance to most real women, nor to what most men really wanted. “‘The best proof of man’s satisfaction with the home is found in his universal absence from it.’” Ignatius Donnelly was no pious traditionalist but a progressive interested in feminism. And his wife did not in fact conform to the ideals he praised. “Throughout her life, Kate Donnelly behaved in ways that were distinctly contrary to the ideals of the Cult of True Womanhood.”
PDF of Kreuter article