ABSTRACT
The first three decades of the nineteenth century saw the disappearance from the public sphere of the radical rhetoric of women's rights that was so important in the early 1790s. Perhaps the most consistent concern of writers on gender was the distinction between private and public life. The doctrine of separate spheres, by which women were believed to belong in domestic life, also emphasized the responsibility of the private woman to the public sphere. The power of journals and newspapers to publicize women's lives can be seen in the speed and extent with which the events of royal women's lives became part of those of men and women throughout the country. Domestic women become the embodiment of higher and purer moral virtues than men, and their influence over men becomes a force which, as More argues, can save the nation in its hour of need.
