The cult of domesticity, also known as the cult of true womanhood, is an ideology about the roles proper for white women in the 1800s. This way of thinking promoted the ideal that wealthy white women should stay at home and should not do any work outside of the home. This ideology promoted an ideal of separate spheres, in which women remained in the home and men led out in the world. Four ideals were held up for women to aspire to:

1. Be more religious than men (piety)
2. Be pure in heart, mind, and body (purity)
3. Be deferential to their husbands (submissiveness)
4. Act as keepers of home and hearth, concerned chiefly with household duties (domesticity)