In the colonial era, when theater was an aristocratic institution, women were a prominent part of the privileged audiences. With democratization in the early republic, theater became increasingly a male institution. During midcentury, as theaters began to constrain audiences, women's presence increased again. Re–gendering of theater was part of fundamental cultural shifts, first to a middle-class culture founded on respectability, and then to a culture of consumption conceived around the female shopper.

Respectability was instrumental in establishing antebellum class status. It rested upon a code of manners that placed great emphasis on restraint, self–control, and impression management. At its core it was a gendered concept. Middle–class women, particularly wives and mothers, were its primary carriers. The demands of etiquette fell far more heavily on women than on men, and many of the requirements upon men referred to their treatment of women. Women could therefore signify the respectability of those with them and the places they frequented.

The antebellum middle class delineated public spaces as respectable or disreputable, depending on whether they endangered the reputation of a middle–class woman. By mapping much of the geography of cities as dangerous, women's access was severely circumscribed. To the degree women were involved publicly – in religion, the temperance movement, charity and missionary work – it was justified as extensions of their domestic roles. When women transgressed this domestic “cover,” their presence in inappropriate places or circumstances might label them as “public women,” that is, prostitutes.