Can you say "cult of true womanhood"?

From AP today: "Women Provide Emotion at State of Union":

They met just before the speech began: the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and the daughter of a man killed by Saddam Hussein's regime. They found some comfort in a spontaneous moment that electrified President Bush's State of the Union address.

The two women, both touched by death in Iraq, reached out for each other while lawmakers, military leaders, the president and the nation watched. Their hug inspired the longest applause of the evening.

Bush said the women's locked embrace was a touching moment and an expression of compassion and appreciation from an Iraqi who enjoyed the freedom to vote on Sunday. . . .

Pain etched lines in Norwood's forehead as she held al-Suhail. Norwood finally let go, took her husband's arm and rested her head on his shoulder. . . .

From Godey's Lady's Book (February 1850):

There is a beautiful parallelism between the condition of woman in her domestic life and the character of a nation. She is the mother of men, and the former of their minds, at that early age when every word distills upon the heart like the dew-drop upon the tender grass. There is to that young mind no truth or falsehood in the world but that whose words flow from the mother's lips. There is no beauty in character, nor glory in action, which has not been concentrated by her praise. . . . It is thus that society is formed in its social and moral ideas; and thus its condition must ever present, on a large scale, a parallelism in its moral life to the condition of woman. It is not n matter of fancy, but a great social fact. Edward D. Mansfield.

Groundhog Day, indeed. This is like the Wal-mart approach to gender ("We're rolling back social progress!")

The Rights of the "True Woman":

The right to love whom others scorn,
The right to comfort and to mourn,
The right to shed new joy on earth,
The right to feel the soul's high worth,
Such woman's rights a God will bless
And crown their champions with success.