![]() ![]() Its publication received widespread attention, leaving most appalled with her candor about the First Family. Keckley published her autobiography Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four in the White House in 1868, detailing her emancipation and her time working for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. ![]() That understanding, however, would be challenged by modiste to the Washington elite and former enslaved woman, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. In discerning what it meant to be a member of that “cult of True Womanhood,” Black women were used to determine the boundaries of white womanhood a “True Woman” was to be the antithesis of the stereotypical sexual and dominant Black woman. ![]() No matter how pious or domestic a woman of color was, she could never hope to be considered a proper lady by Victorian standards. However, there was another pre-requisite for joining this revered cult¬: whiteness. “True Womanhood” was defined by four fundamental virtues– piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Nineteenth century notions of femininity and etiquette were governed by strict societal standards. ![]()
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