Page 24 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPT E R ONE

be enormous. If women developed feminine ideals based upon what
one scholar has termed the "four cardinal virtues," meaning piety, purity,
submissiveness, and domesticity, at the same time refusing to sully them­
selves by entering into the male domain of business and politics, their
salutary influence could be virtually unlimited. 9 As a result, a number
of tropes, or themes, appeared in domestic literature for women. First,
male and female writers and commentators, who agreed that women
exercised a set of mental characteristics different from men's, stressed
that women were particularly capable of religious feelings. As early as
1 8 26, guidebook author Hester Chapone claimed that religion provided
the guiding principle for women and their sphere. She advised women
that because of their softness and sensibility they would have an easier
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time meeting religious proscriptions than men. I O In 8 59, writer Harriet
Beecher Stowe carried religiosity to a new high. In The Minister's W o oing,
Stowe's character James admonishes his wife Mary, "You girls and
women don't know your own power. . . You are a living Gospel." II
.
A second trope suggested that, given their incredible spiritual
powers, wives and mothers could resolve even the worst of family prob­
lems. A spate of domestic novels demonstrated how women were to
accomplish such feats. The heroine of an I 854 novel, The Lamplighter by
Maria Cummins, presented the epitome of the reforming female.
Morally flawless, Gerty not only inspired every man who was fortunate
enough to come into contact with her, but saved her sinning father by
simply letting her tears fall on his sleeping face. 12 The following year,
Marion Harland's Alone portrayed its protagonist, Ida, as reforming those
around her by her own perfect example. Despite the disadvantages of
being orphaned, young, and unmarried, she developed such moral
strength that when her sickly guardian heaped abuse on her for trying
to cheer him, she smiled and "bore up bravely until God gave her
strength." 13 Similarly, the heroine of Caroline Lee Hentz's Ernest
Linwood, published in 1856, reformed a maliciously jealous husband
through her constancy and fortitude. 14 W h y would women not want to
read such heroic tales about themselves?
Moreover, domestic novelists implied in a third trope that women
could affect larger communities as well as families. In 1 8 39, a Dr. Blair
stated that "the prevailing manners of an age depend, more than we are

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