The Victorian era in the United States saw significant changes in the social, domestic and religious roles of women. This period, from shortly after the Civil War until the First World War, marked a shift for women from traditional middle-class female responsibilities to more domestically challenging ones. This study examines late Victorian Protestant church community cookbooks as moral and cultural guides written by women for women, documenting the domestic roles and Christian practices of women in the years before and after the turn of the twentieth century. This paper first defines the American Victorian period. It considers the relationship between women and Protestant Christianity during the era in relation to female social roles. It then examines church community cookbooks as uniquely viable and valuable historical and autobiographical sources through which to better understand Christian domestic practice in Victorian America. Protestant Victorian female ideals and gendered piety reveal the role of women as moral matriarchs, and how men factored into the domestic equation during the period. Eleven American Protestant Christian cookbooks published from 1881 to 1913 serve as case studies throughout. These texts illuminate the late Victorian period through the words and recipes of the women who wrote them. They also present recipes for food and life in broader terms as domestic and religious guides, and advertisements from the texts offer additional information about the connection between domesticity and religion during the era. This argument concludes with an analysis of the lasting influences of the church community cookbooks on domestic manuals through the mid-twentieth century, reflecting on the relevance of the texts to the generations of women who have shared them.
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