“Madam” Elizabeth: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley’s Sisyphean Attempt to Join the “Cult of True Womanhood”

Nineteenth century notions of femininity and etiquette were governed by strict societal standards. “True Womanhood” was defined by four fundamental virtues– piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. However, there was another pre-requisite for joining this revered cult¬: whiteness. No matter how pious or domestic a woman of color was, she could never hope to be considered a proper lady by Victorian standards. 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. That understanding, however, would be challenged by modiste to the Washington elite and former enslaved woman, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. 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. Its publication received widespread attention, leaving most appalled with her candor about the First Family. Keckley pierced the tranquil sphere of the domestic realm, bringing it into the public forum. With everything to lose as a Black woman in the postbellum period, one must ask the question: why would Keckley write the work in the first place? Though it may seem complicated at first glance, the answer is rather simple: respectability. Although Black women were often used to define “True Womanhood” for white women, Elizabeth Keckley’s prose uses a white woman, Mary Todd Lincoln, to show how a Black woman like herself much better represents “True Womanhood.