This above illlustration from an 1855 issue of Godey's (published in the same year as the first edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass) shows a woman in her ideal role--as a "moral mother" instructing several children in an idyllic domestic scene.   The caption, "The Scholars," obviously refers to the children who are learning their "ABCs" and not to the woman, who is merely their caretaker.

    The woman, if she had faithfully read the magazine, would be preoccupied with more "practical" pursuits.   A large section of every issue was devoted to the "Practical Dress Instructor," for example, which emphasized, much like modern women's magazines, the best ways to wear the latest fashion and instructions on how to construct clothes for your children.   The illustration on the left, showing the proper way to wear a particular bonnet, is also from the 1855 issue of Godey's.

   The magazine also served as a popular literary journal.  Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others, contributed stories.    Most of the fiction displayed very similiar themes, however.   A story from the 1855 issue, for example, was entitled the "The Angel of Annunciation."    The character of Mrs. Lane begins the story by putting down her sewing and lamenting the fact that her "strength and health" are "overtasked" by "household government."   She blames her husband for not taking on enough responsibilities in the home. After detailing the drudgery of her life, she says that she wishes to die.   From that moment on, her health declines to the point where she is on the brink of death.   But then the "Angel of Annunciation" comes and tells her to that she must recover for the sake of her children and her husband.   The climax of the story reinforces the importance of her domestic duties:

     "Oh, spare me, that I may recover strength ere I go hence to be no more!"
     Strength not of body, but of soul.   She was even content to welcome the life of a suffering, hopeless invalid; a harder trial than any she had yet know to bear with fortitude, because adding to each and all.  Life at any price she craved for the first time since it had been given her, not for its pleasures, not for its case, nor even for simple comfort.  Life to avert sorrow and trial and hardship, which she had sunk under, that she might avert it from them who had been given to her keeping.