5.1 5.2 female characteristics

Female characteristics . "True womanhood," a model of self-sacrificial piety that motivated domestic and maternal excellence among northern American women in the early nineteenth century and maintained a remnant of patriarchal structure in the South beyond the Civil War, trickled down to Texas only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and made its appearance in Baptist sermons, poems, didactic tales, and, especially, obituaries. Prior to that time the mode of living for Texas females had been dictated by the need to survive, with whatever thin overlay of culture or manners survived the hardship of migration. The exigencies of frontier life demanded informality and physical activity rather than etiquette and passive submission, but the chivalrous myth of perfect women selflessly guarding the innocent and submitting to the powerful captured their impoverished imaginations at a time and place in which it was particularly anachronistic. Its unattainable, romantic quality undoubtedly contributed to its popularity, much as glamorous Hollywood musicals appealed during the Depression of the 1930s.

In 1895 a Baptist school girl's scrapbook contained a clipping that outlined the "beautiful girlhood" to which she aspired:

cheerful, but never boisterous; happy, but not thoughtless; gay, but not giddy. She is a peacemaker, the sure helper, the ready sympathizer, the active worker of her family. Is anything wanted? She is the one to supply it; and she can do all that is to be done for the comfort of every one else. Eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, hands to the incapable; loving, unselfish, energetic, industrious; she has no ambition outside of her home circle. . . .She knows neither idleness nor repining; neither the pangs of unsatisfied ambition, nor the pain of passion, of envy, or jealousy, or hate. Love with her is sunshine, not flame, and home is her altar. . . .

Baptist Standard (Waco), November 14, 1895, p. 14. Hereafter in these notes this publication will be referred to as " BS ." The place of publication from inception until February 3, 1898, was Waco, Texas; from that date it was published in Dallas, Texas.

Naturally a childhood of such training and outlook produced a "lady" that fit this prize-winning definition:

To be a lady means, rightly, to be a gentlewoman who shows by her every word and action a sweet and gentle dignity, with a gracious charm of manner; a woman whose heart is pure and true, who is tender toward all suffering, who sympathizes with those in trouble, and is ever ready to give that which costs her some effort and self-denial. A lady thinks no work derogatory, and no one is deemed too low to receive courtesy and kindness. She is pure and good in every detail of life, a true friend, and a "ministering angel" in sorrow and sickness.

BS , March 20, 1913, pp.