Democracy in America

Tocqueville then turns to the family as a social institution, pointing out that the “domestic dictatorship” of unlimited paternal authority does not last long in American families (558). American fathers treat their children’s maturation and independence as natural and do not find it threatening. Tocqueville calls fathers in democracies “an older and richer citizen than his sons” (559). In aristocracies fathers are not only political figures; they are also “listened to with deference, approached only with respect; and the love one bears for him is always tempered by fear” (560). In democracies fathers have more personal and emotional relationships with their children, which is apparent when one compares personal correspondence there with those of aristocracy. These social changes accord less automatic economic power for eldest sons as heirs of family fortune. This also produces emotional bonds, as “it divides their inheritance, but it permits their souls to intermingle” (562). Aristocrats may envy these family habits, but Tocqueville argues that they are achievable only through democratic social and legal systems. As in earlier chapters, Tocqueville remains convinced that political changes have strong influences on social customs and cultural norms. He asserts that while democracy destroys many old social conventions, others it merely alters: “it rings relative together at the same time that it separates citizens” (562).

Tocqueville makes a similar point about gender norms thanks to American politics and religion. He argues that Protestantism and democracy provide unmarried women with far more freedom than they enjoy in Europe. American women are far less sheltered about threats to their virtue, Tocqueville argues: “If she does not indulge in evil she at least knows what it is; she has pure mores rather than a chaste mind” (564). Americans have decided that women must be able to defend their own virtue and need to survive in democratic society through “confidence in her own strength” (564). Tocqueville reluctantly agrees with this.

This commitment to independence, however, disappears at marriage, due to Puritan tradition and the demands of the industrial economy. Tocqueville declares that both social factors “bring them to exact from woman a self-abnegation and a continual sacrifice of her pleasures to her business that is rare to demand of her in Europe” (565). American women do this through the same exercise of free will and “reason” that Tocqueville was concerned with in earlier chapters: They take marriage seriously and marry only after thought, and their reason also tells them that conjugal submission is the safest path to happiness. The strong will of girlhood is transformed into weathering the economic and social challenges that often meet American women whose husbands seek multiple careers or settlements in the new territories.

Tocqueville then rebuts other political philosophers who insist that warmer climates produce stricter morality. He points out that ideas about marriage and gender roles are much stricter in North America than even in England. Tocqueville attributes this to equality and even points out that it reduces sexual temptation: “Then there is no girl who does not believe she can become the wife of the man who prefers her, which makes disorder in mores before marriage very difficult” (568). Marriage in aristocracy is not between equals but is for property reasons, which creates a greater sympathy for affairs since emotional needs were not considered from the outset. In his discussion of families and marriage, Tocqueville seems like a strong supporter of emotional bonds and social arrangements that facilitate them—his love of aristocracy does not extend to strong support for relationships that are bound by property without real attachment.

The same faith in women’s reason that Tocqueville noted earlier gives them more ability to choose suitable partners, unlike young women in aristocracies who may choose the first man who appeals to them emotionally. American marriage contracts are also inflexible because it is assumed that both parties chose freely. Tocqueville defends marriages based on love, noting that they fail in Europe for lack of social support and that only those of weak character can defy such strong norms in pursuit of passion.

In general, Americans are more practical about relationships. Tocqueville asserts that they regularly work “toward some visible and proximate goal that presents itself as the natural and necessary object of their desires” (571) rather than toward abstract passions. Tocqueville argues that the same trend toward social order is possible in France, and it is only revolution that explains how “public virtue has become uncertain and private morality unsteady” (572). He sees signs of stability as the former aristocracy has turned toward family and private virtue after losing political power, and argues that this may well spread as society becomes more stable. Tocqueville retains his skeptical stance toward revolutions even as he looks hopefully forward to the democracies they facilitate.

When he confronts the prospect of equality between men and women, Tocqueville recoils from any arrangement that would make the two sexes “not only equal, but alike” (573). Instead, he supports free reign for each in their respective spheres of influence. Women embrace male matrimonial authority, as “they made a sort of glory for themselves out of the voluntary abandonment of their wills” (575). Tocqueville argues that the American esteem for women is evident in legal codes that have strict penalties for rape. And it emerges more broadly in the reality that they have “elevated her with all their power to the level of man in the intellectual and moral world; and in this they appear to me to have admirably understood the true notion of democratic progress” (576). Tocqueville’s view of binary gender roles is that they are complementary, not equal: Women are entirely distinct from men and should remain so. But he approves of their power and influence when it is applied correctly, as he argues that the “superiority of its women” explains much about America’s success in the world (576). Where Tocqueville upholds racial hierarchy even as he describes its tragic effects, he insists that the gender binary fosters social flourishing when it involves respect for women’s particular capacities.