Stowe's eighty-five yearsspanned most of the nineteenth century. So, an important step toward understanding her long career is to identify cultural trends during that era. Major factors shaping Stowe's writing included shifting conceptions of middle-class American womanhood; the growth of American literature; racial politics; Protestant religious influence on US society; and efforts to build a cross-regional and transatlantic social class committed to cultural leadership.

Middle-class womanhood

One important trend in nineteenth-century American society was the separation of men's and women's responsibilities in middle-class family life, supporting belief in domesticity as women's realm of work. Whereas, in the colonial era, husbands and wives had collaborated in a predominantly rural economy to provide subsistence for their families, nineteenth-century urbanization brought with it an increasing tendency for men to work outside the home and women to be in charge of the so-called “domestic sphere.” In governing that sphere, cultural arbiters such as magazine editor Sarah Hale argued, women actually exercised enormous social influence by teaching children and guiding their husbands in moral directions. Women were supposed to be particularly adept at “moral suasion,” an approach for encouraging enlightened behavior that was linked to females' heightened spiritual sense.

The ideology of domesticity certainly constrained women's opportunities in some ways (for example, by limiting their access to careers). But this vision of women's rightful leadership as home-based could also be empowering.