What is "the Angel in the House" in "Professions for Women" by Virginia Woolf?

The phrase "The Angel in the House" was actually the title
of a narrative poem by Coventry Patmore, later appropriated satirically by Virginia
Woolf. Patmore's poem, written about his wife, represents an ideal of femininity as
pure, self-sacrificing, and utterly devoted first to her parents and then to her
husband; Patmore states:

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Man must be pleased; but him to
please

Is woman's pleasure;
...

Woolf argues that this
ideal of self-sacrificing, innocent, and morally pure femininity was as much an obstacle
to women's careers as artists, writers, and professionals as the more obvious forms of
patriarchy and discrimination. Women who conform to this sort of ideal of self-sacrifice
cannot devote the time and energy to their work necessary for creation of great art,
because the angelic ideal always mandates that they put men and family ahead of their
own projects. She expands this concept by suggesting "a woman must have money and a room
of her own if she is to write fiction," something incompatible with the ideal of the
angel in the house whose role is to nurture her family and serve as a moral
exemplar.