Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

4-2023

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

Tocqueville, feminism, adaptive preference, democracy, soft despotism, patriarchy, coercion, democracy in America, liberalism

Discipline

Ethics and Political Philosophy | Political Science

Research Areas

Political Science

Publication

Political Theory

Volume

51

Issue

5

First Page

767

Last Page

789

ISSN

0090-5917

Identifier

10.1177/00905917231167092

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231167092

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