Revisiting Tocqueville’s American Woman

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231167092
• Author: Christine Dunn Henderson
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231167092

Political Theory

2023, Vol. 51(5) 767 –789

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917231167092

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Article

Revisiting Tocqueville’s

American Woman

Christine Dunn Henderson1

Abstract

This paper revisits Tocqueville’s famous portrait of the American female,

which begins with assertions of her equality to males but ends with her

self-cloistering in the domestic sphere. Taking a cue from Tocqueville’s

extended sketch of the “faded” pioneer wife in “A Fortnight in the

Wilderness” and drawing connections to Tocqueville’s criticisms of the

division of industrial labor, I argue that the American girl’s ostensibly

free choice to remove herself from public life is not an act of freedom.

Rather, it is a manifestation of a particular type of unfreedom that reveals

underappreciated connections between the two great dangers about which

Democracy in America warns: tyrannical majoritarianism and soft despotism.

My argument that the girl’s choice to withdraw from public life is coerced

rather than free thus highlights the nonpolitical sources of oppression that

exist within democratic societies. The paper concludes by raising questions

about the need for coercion within Tocquevillian democracy and the

implications of this for Tocqueville’s “new” political science—indeed, for

his liberalism more generally.

Keywords

Alexis de Tocqueville, women, soft despotism, tyranny of the majority,

liberalism, equality, adaptive preferences

1Associate Professor of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management

University, Singapore

Corresponding Author:

Christine Dunn Henderson, Associate Professor of Political Science, School of Social Sciences/

College of Integrative Studies, Singapore Management University, 10 Canning Rise, Level 5,

179873, Singapore.

Email: chenderson@smu.edu.sg

1167092PTXXXX10.1177/00905917231167092Political TheoryHenderson

research-article2023

768 Political Theory 51(5)

An early draft of Democracy in America’s discussions of American women

and girls began “Nothing struck me more in America than the condition of

women . . .”1 Realizing he had already made generous use of the phrase

“nothing struck me more in America than . . . ,” Tocqueville eventually

redrafted, but the original wording had not been inaccurate in that the condi-

tion of women in America did leave a deep impression on him. Indeed, two

of the more vivid tableaux in Democracy in America feature women: the

spirited young girl from the 1840 Democracy, and the “faded” pioneer

woman from “A Fortnight in the Wilderness.”2 Sketches of opposite ends of

the female’s life, they also depict contrasting relationships to freedom. This

paper examines the role of women in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,

offering a reading of Tocqueville’s account of the high-spirited and indepen-

dent girl’s transformation into a sad and cloistered wife that emphasizes the

constraints under which the young girl’s choice is made.3 Drawing connec-

tions to Tocqueville’s criticisms of the division of labor and to the exclusion

of free Blacks within the North, I argue that the young girl’s nominally free

decision to remove herself from public life and to enter into a “separate

spheres” domestic division of labor is not an example of individual autonomy

in any robust sense. Rather, it is an example of unfreedom on at least two

levels: at best, it is an instance of the circumscribed range of individual choice

cultivated by the softly despotic regime, and at worst, the young girl is the

victim of tyrannical majoritarianism.

By reading Tocqueville’s account of American women against other sec-

tions of Democracy in America, we are able to see that the American girl does

not represent the pinnacle of self-control necessary for democratic freedom;

instead, her transformation from a free girl to a cloistered wife provides a

case study of both forms of democratic tyranny about which Tocqueville

worried. This reassessment of Tocqueville’s American woman thus necessi-

tates a reassessment of the democratic family as the locus of freedom’s pres-

ervation. More importantly still, reading Tocqueville against himself pushes

1. Tocqueville (2010, 1041, note c). All future references to Democracy and

America will be made parenthetically within the main text, with page numbers

corresponding to this edition.

2. An abbreviated version of this sketch appears within the main text, at the end of

the chapter devoted to the American wife.

3. Tocqueville’s analysis of women and girls in the United States is devoted only

to white women. Women of color—Black and Native American—are absent his

discussions of the family, though they figure in a remarkable sketch of racial

hierarchy in the “Three Races” chapter at the end of volume 1. Pedersen (2019)

offers an extensive analysis of this scene, which Welch (2006) describes as an

example of “spontaneous feelings of sociability being denatured” (312).