The Cult of Millenial Motherhood and the Rhetoric of Female Reform: Domesticity, the Millenium, and Gender Constructions in Antebellum America

摘要

Early American reform has long been a subject of study and interest for scholars of American history. The period between 1820 and 1850, during and directly after the Second Great Awakening, gave rise to myriad different reformers and reform movements, all with different agendas. Yet, within specific movements, and even among different ones, reformers held similar ideologies that wielded great influence over the movements they led. This was especially true of conservative female reformers, many of whom believed in domestic ideologies that prescribed a separate, yet equal sphere of influence for women. As Linda Kerber, Ruth H. Bloch, and Barbara Welter argue, post-revolutionary and antebellum America gave rise to the Republican Mother, the Moral Mother, and the Cult of True Womanhood? Each theory proposes different ways of understanding how and why religious maternal domesticity became so influential in the early nineteenth century. However, these theories tend to overlook the role that evangelical millennialism played in the construction of these ideologies.