Judith Rowbotham describes the late nineteenth-century shift in the British feminine ideal as a movement away from the ‘Household Fairy’ to the ‘Home Goddess’. Influenced by New Woman literature emphasizing female intelligence, independence and strength, this new goddess of the hearth was depicted in journalism and fiction as a professional in the domestic sphere. The idea of the capable, resourceful domestic goddess was particularly useful to emigration promoters who wished to market the emigration and settlement of middle-class British women. Those in the colonies and dominions who might believe middle-class women to be unsuited to the rigours of settlement life and those women who might be apprehensive about the life awaiting them in various new lands could be reassured by the image of the domestic goddess triumphant. A key selling point of the British domestic goddess was her utility to empire: with her ability not only to manage her home competently but to expand those domestic skills to manage her wider community, the domestic goddess exercised a civilizing effect. Moreover, single British domestic goddesses were potential mates for British settlers; once married, these women would produce children of British heritage to populate the new land. Organizations such as the British Women's Emigration Association (BWEA) publicized their work and promoted female emigration and settlement in the periodical press, not only in their own organ, the Imperial Colonist, but more broadly in general newspapers and magazines.