Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French sociologist and political theorist who traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a greater wealth of information about the United States of America which he wrote in “Democracy in America” (1835). It was one of the most influential books of the 19th century and used as study for a history of the United States.
Alexis de Tocqueville scrutinized America’s religion and government, its society and industry. He wanted to know what caused the United States to surpass Europe as the world’s political and economic superpower.
His conclusion? WOMEN.
The women Tocqueville saw were not CEOs or celebrities, politicians, or professional athletes. They were largely confined to the home: cleaning, cooking, taking care of children. But to the young political historian, no position seemed more important. “There have never been free societies without morals, and . . . it is the woman that molds the morals,” he wrote. Tocqueville saw American women as the keystone of the family, the ones who held everyone else together.
By taking primary responsibility for the home, American women allowed their husbands to fulfill their roles as providers and protectors, and they both worked toward a common goal: STRENGTHENING THE FAMILY. These traditional roles of men and women, maligned today as harmful “gender stereotypes,” are precisely what helped to make America exceptional in Tocqueville’s eyes.
Here’s what Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about women:
“Thus the Americans do not think that man and woman have either the duty or the right to perform the same offices, but they show an equal regard for both their respective parts; and though their lot is different, they consider both of them as beings of equal value.
“They do not give to the courage of woman the same form or the same direction as to that of man; but they never doubt her courage: and if they hold that man and his partner ought not always to exercise their intellect and understanding in the same manner, they at least believe the understanding of the one to be as sound as that of the other, and her intellect to be as clear. Thus, then, whilst they have allowed the social inferiority of woman to subsist, they have done all they could to raise her morally and intellectually to the level of man; and in this respect they appear to me to have excellently understood the true principle of democratic improvement.
“As for myself, I do not hesitate to avow that, although the women of the United States are confined within the narrow circle of domestic life, and their situation is in some respects one of extreme dependence, I have nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position; and if I were asked, now that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply— to the superiority of their women.”
Picture taken by Victorian photographer, Emma Johnston.