Democracy In America By Tocqueville

At the outset of Alexis de Tocqueville’s work, Democracy in America, the theorist asserts, regarding the spread of equality, that, “The gradual development of equality of conditions is therefore a providential fact, and it has the principal characteristics of one: it is universal, it is enduring, each day it escapes human power; all events, like all men, serve its developments,” (Democracy, Book, 6). Tocqueville uses the term ‘equality of conditions’ to describe socially formal equal footing among one’s peers. In plainer terms, it implies an absence of nobility or formal rank in the eyes of the law, and Tocqueville argues that the entire world is heading toward an ‘equality of conditions’. Tocqueville argues that for equality, Democratic peoples,
He begins his analysis of women by reflecting on girls’ education, noting that, “Long before the young American woman... has entirely left childhood she already learns to think for herself, speaks freely, and acts alone...” (Democracy, 563). Tocqueville assigns great importance to the independence of woman as a sign of her equality, and he observes that the young girl in America is taught to be self-reliant from early on. According to Tocqueville’s theory, freedom is resultant from equality. So, if girls in America are taught and allowed to be free in their daily lives and reasoning as men are, then are they not equal? Tocqueville later acknowledges, “... Americans do not believe that man and woman have the duty or the right to do the same things, but they show the same esteem for the role of each of them, and they consider them as beings whose value is equal although their destiny differs.” (Democracy, 576). Tocqueville does not make an exception for women in his argument of the spread of equality of conditions as he truly views the American woman’s life as an existence simply divided into two equally valuable social spheres, in which men work and women tend to the home. For Tocqueville, The equality of conditions does not imply exactly equal results
Late in the passage, he remarks, “I have brought out how democracy is destroying or modifying the various inequalities to which society gives birth... will it not come finally to act on the great inequality of man and woman, which until our day has seemed to have its eternal foundations in nature?” (Democracy,573). Here Tocqueville directly applies his theory of the equality of conditions to the question of woman’s status. He asks aloud what the theory he proposed would ask of women: If all inequality is bound to be vanquished, will not women become more equal with man? Tocqueville shortly thereafter answers his own question, noting, “I think that the social movement that brings son and father, servant and master, and, in general, inferior and superior closer to the same level elevates woman and must, more and more, make her the equal of man” (Democracy, 573). Tocqueville does justice to his theory, noting that if he is right about the force of equality, surely it will come to reduce the ‘natural’ hierarchy between the two genders. Here we see his theory fully explored. Though he does not view the American woman’s place as one of oppression, he does note that there is a gap of ‘natural’ inequality between the genders, and that it will close as the force of equality of conditions continues to shape the