~The Ideal Home~
To the Victorians, domesticity seemed as instinctive as breathing, because their first allegiance was the home--creating it, perfecting it, revering it, and, above all, instilling its spirit in the next generations. Since women largely dispatched this duty, home was called "the empire of the mother." Motherhood lost its deepest meaning and its most exalted domain when we lost the Victorian sense of home.
---1850
