Democracy's Family Values: Alexis de Tocqueville on Anxiety, Fear and Desire

Author(s): Laura Janara

Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique ,
Sep., 2001, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 551-578
Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science
politique
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Democracy's Family Values: Alexis de Tocqueville
on Anxiety, Fear and Desire'

LAURA JANARA University of Western Ontario

Born amid France's volatile transition from aristocracy to democracy,

Alexis de Tocqueville was acutely aware of the consequences that a
change in "social state" means for family life as well as for politics,
society and culture. Whereas today the bourgeois nuclear family is
often considered "natural," de Tocqueville considered it a dynamic
historical institution. In Democracy in America, he argues that the
form family takes reflects the broader dynamics in which it is situated.
De Tocqueville places European feudal family habits in the context of
the aristocratic social state, and compares the aristocratic sensibilities
with the democratic ones emerging in France and with those already
entrenched in the United States. In his chapters on family relations, as
well as elsewhere in the text, de Tocqueville argues that family is in no
way a discrete sphere of life, that "there are certain great social princi-
ples which a people either introduces everywhere or tolerates
nowhere," and "the changes that have taken place within the family
are closely connected with the social and political revolution taking
place under our eyes."' An aristocracy can last only if built upon a
legalized principle of inequality that is "introduced into the family as

1 I gratefully acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

of Canada and the Killam Trust at Dalhousie University for support; Mary G.
Dietz for many rich exchanges that contributed directly to this article; Bruce
Baum for comments and the title; and JOURNAL reviewers for comments. Thank
you also to Audrey Boctor for French-language translation of the abstract.
2 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. by George Lawrence (New
York: Harper and Row, 1966; reprint, New York: Anchor Books, 1969), 586
(citations are to the reprint edition). Hereafter in the notes this text is referred to
as Democracy.

Laura Janara, Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario, Lon-

don, Ontario N6A 5C2; ljanara@uwo.ca
Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique
XXXIV:3 (September/septembre 2001) 551-578
O 2001 Canadian Political Science Association ('1 Association canadienne de science politique)
and/et la Socidt6 qudbicoise de science politique

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 552 LAURA JANARA

well as into the rest

racy to democracy, "
has evolved between t
tance formerly sepa
paternal authority, if
"family habits of dem
laws" and "one cannot
ers."5 De Tocquevill
ethos as something th
as discrete spheres.
dimension of his work: John Stuart Mill was the first to dismiss de
Tocqueville's analysis of family for lacking "any considerable
value."6 In more recent years, although several commentators have
addressed de Tocqueville's arguments on family, all miss, or miscon-
strue, his overarching observation that a society's dominant mentality
governs its family life as well as society and politics.' This idea impli-

3 Ibid., 399.
4 Ibid., 585.
5 Ibid., 589. In The Ancien Regime, de Tocqueville likewise notes that "If you
want to ascertain whether castes, and the ideas, habits, and barriers to which they
give rise, are really abolished in any nation, look at the marriages which take
place there. There you will find the decisive test" (Alexis de Tocqueville, The
Ancien Regime, trans. by John Bonner [London: J.M. Dent, 1988], 66). In some
ways, de Tocqueville sees family relations inversely related to those in society. In
aristocracy, a chain of relations links people for life to all classes as well as to
members of one's own class, the latter being "all children of the same family"
(561). Within aristocratic families, however, "hearts are seldom in harmony"
(587, 588). In democracy, society is atomistic while family is tightly knit. While
"nothing could have been tighter than the bond uniting lord and vassal in the feu-
dal world," in democracy the same men would "no longer know each other." But
while democracy loosens social ties, it "tightens natural ones. At the same time
as [democracy] separates citizens, it brings kindred closer together" (589). De
Tocqueville's observations here resonate with common understandings of family
life in nineteenth-century democracy: as a haven in a harsh world. See Stephen
Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American
Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), 43-44. But these observations are sec-
ondary in Democracy in America to de Tocqueville's overarching claim that fam-
ily and its "social state" share the same ethos.
6 John Stuart Mill, "M. de Tocqueville on Democracy in America," Dissertations
and Discussions: Political, Philosophical and Historical (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 1874), 124.
7 For example, see Jack Lively, The Social and Political Thought ofAlexis de Toc-
queville (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); Marvin Zetterbaum, Tocqueville and
the Problem of Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967). Zetter-
baum says that the "primary features" rather than "individual ramifications" of
Tocqueville's account of democracy are what must be examined; the effect of the
"education of women in a democracy" hardly equates with "his reflections on,
say, the tyranny of the majority" (59).

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Abstract. Standing interpretations of the family relations depicted in Alexis de Toc-
queville's Democracy in America project onto his portrait of democracy a strong public-
private dichotomy. However, de Tocqueville insists that family life is embedded in the
dynamics that shape the broader society and culture. Investigating this claim yields a psy-
chological account of the desires, fears and anxieties that haunt democratic society.
These passions foment a paradoxical mix of egalitarianism and hierarchy, liberty and
subjugation, within family life and beyond. De Tocqueville's fundamental thesis that
democracy boasts healthy and unhealthy potentialities is better understood when the idea
of family as a discrete sphere is abandoned.

Rtsumt. Selon les interpr6tations courantes de l'oeuvre d'Alexis de Tocqueville, la

d6mocratie qu'il d6peint dans La ddmocratie en Amdrique est caract6ris6e par la s6para-
tion 6tanche des spheres priv6e et publique. Cependant, Alexis de Tocqueville insiste sur
le fait que la vie familiale est enchassde dans les dynamiques qui d6terminent l'6volution
de la soci6t6 et de la culture. L'investigation plus pouss6e de cette these permet de rendre
compte des d6sirs, des peurs et des angoisses qui hantent la soci6t6 d6mocratique. Ces
passions forment un m6lange paradoxal d'6galitarisme, de hi6rarchie, de libert6 et
d'assujetissement au sein et au-delh de la famille. La these fondamentale de de Tocque-
ville selon laquelle la d6mocratie est fibre de laisser s'exprimer les possibilit6s bonnes ou
mauvaises est mieux comprise lorsque est abandonn6e l'id6e d'une s6paration de la vie
familiale de la vie publique.

cates our understanding of both family in democracy and democratic

society and culture itself.
With some partial exceptions, all of the more recent commenta-
tors project onto de Tocqueville's analysis an exaggerated separation
of family and public as discrete realms, not only spatially but psycho-
logically. For instance, Delba Winthrop argues that in assessing nine-
teenth-century American middle-class family life and a world in
which females lack suffrage, de Tocqueville is no mere sexist. Though
his Americans may be convinced that women and men should be
treated differently for reasons of nature, he sees this as a matter of
convention designed to meet the needs democracy itself generates.8
But in so interpreting de Tocqueville, Winthrop ignores his central
concern, which is to distinguish between healthy republican and
unhealthy despotic democracy-a distinction that develops his
fundamental claim that modern democracy is laced with various
potentialities, both hopeful and dangerous.9 Winthrop claims that de

8 Allan Bloom argues that, following Rousseau, de Tocqueville believes that fam-
ily serves an essential moral function in democracy by differing constitutionally
from public life. Women are different from, but equal to, men as the keepers of
good morals, offsetting democracy's selfish, licentious tendencies (Allan Bloom,
"The Relation of the Sexes: Rousseauian Reflections on the Crisis of Our
Times," in Peter Lawler, ed., Tocqueville's Political Science: Classic Ess
[New York: Garland, 1992]).
9 Tocqueville, Democracy, 57. De Tocqueville's work is rooted in this dist
between healthy republican democracy led by active citizens, and unh
despotic democracy peopled by passive inhabitants tutored by a doting state

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 554 LAURA JANARA

Tocqueville exposes th
ther "fulfilling [n]o
meaningful and attain
tle or nothing to gain
these women "embo
they remain outside
would if only they w
Effectively invertin
Moiler Okin claims
undemocratic patriar
that de Tocqueville, l
private life to such an
galitarian, sometimes
ment within the fami
family.""1 Okin is co
Tocqueville describe
family relations are n
public-private divide,
"equality," which can
ticipatory republicani
Such standing inte
insistence that fam
exhibiting the same p
ety and its politics. J
argue that for de Toc
cally distinguished fr

concern is to "educate"
democratic state despo
associations and public-m
lican concern for the pub
10 Delba Winthrop, "Toc
Democratic Progress,' "
William Mathie takes a
democracy away from s
Mathie argues that the A
disruptive commercial an
be happier in this outsid
The Democratic Family
The Review of Politics 5
11 Susan Moiler Okin, J
1989), 19.
12 Larry Siedentop recognizes that de Tocqueville views the family as "a micro-
cosm" that "reflects" changes in the "structure of society," but does not explore
the matter further (Larry Siedentop, Tocqueville [Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994], 78). Criticizing de Tocqueville's narrow attention to "white" bour-
geois family life, Michael Shapiro works on "diverse genealogies" of US family

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Democracy's Family Values 555

She extols de Tocqueville's "insight th

some way, mesh with or reflect the hi
Americans are democrats in both poli
hand, she says, families "labor under a
themselves on the structure of the pub
democratic family is an essential site fo
citizens. But Elshtain immediately loses
into de Tocqueville's text. Overlooking t
sentation of "democracy"-and what it
and reproduce these paradoxical cond
Rousseauian account of how the ninet
United States, though excluded from ci
straightforward "essential civic vocat
democratic values in her offspring."14
sion from political rights, what might
tainly complains that Americans' "'equa
"did not lead to social and political e
queville "glossed over or lost in the mid
success in raising the moral and intellec
Tocqueville does not praise the role pl
any simple way; instead he diagnoses
their lives. Moreover, in Democracy in
beyond the family. Instead of coming to
feature of de Tocqueville's work, Elshta
private distinction.'6

life, in part to illustrate that they were not disc

Shapiro argues that family life reflects public
(Michael J. Shapiro, "Literary Geography a
Tocqueville's Family Romance," Alternatives
13 Jean Bethke Elshtain, Power Trips and Oth
Civic Discourse (Madison: University of Wisc
Man, Private Woman:. Women in Social and P
ton University Press, 1981), 130.
14 Elshtain, Power Trips, 52.
15 Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman, 129, 1
16 F. L. Morton promises to pick up "where E
best insight: that for de Tocqueville, family
power." Morton follows Elshtain's less persu
one-way support for democratic politics. Mor
and Mathie's view that de Tocqueville's democ
and co-operation whose sensibilities are most
competitive, amoral public (F. L. Morton, "
Tocquevil!e's Democracy in America," this J
sim). Likewise, Sanford Kessler argues that t
Tocqueville describes depends on the family'
(Sanford Kessler, "Tocqueville and Sexual M
queville's Political Science: Classic Essays [Ne

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 556 LAURA JANARA

While many social h

US household as a hav
ica, de Tocqueville ch
sively moderate, tran
with other dimensio
reveals that de Tocq
resources of his text
floods democratic soc
a matter of principl
culture simultaneousl
based in notions of di
produces these parado
to the social uncertain
De Tocqueville argu
mentally shaped by t
some marks of their
must consider its "po
democracy, is Europe
Tocqueville, a world o
relations of fealty an
tion. In aristocracy, a
service of the one wh
ing himself as differ
duty and honor comp
at the risk of his own
obligation, "the memb
dren of the same fam
another, such as can n
zens of a democracy."
one is born into a fix
security at the same t
cies of class life. The individual life-if "the individual" can even be
imagined in this context-is not autonomous but is, rather, one small
node in a larger, seemingly eternal, societal and historical web of rela-
tions. This aristocratic world boasts an evolved culture of manners and
habits that sustains its legally entrenched hierarchical class system,
definitive identities, structured certainties and stability within relations
of mastery and subservience.
In France, violent revolution destroys this world in the name of
equality, liberty and autonomy. In place of the hierarchical, structured

17 Tocqueville, Democracy, 15, 245, 564.

18 Ibid., 31.
19 Ibid., 562.
20 Ibid., 561.

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 Democracy's Family Values 557

interconnections and determinacies of

cratic democracy ushers in flux. De Toc
the last fifty years of transformation,
"disorder." "In the universal confusio
established concepts, incoherently jumbl
falsehood, law and fact, public virtue h
vate morality shaken."2' The aristocrati
differently in America. Emigration f
colonists' view of aristocracy; where
authority-from-above, now it is absent
the "new settlers, without denying the
did not derive from thence the source
cultivated a newfound sense of autonom
arises in both the American colonies and
considers democracy's central disturb
Where once Europe's class, inter-class, f
fostered mutuality, security and guarant
izes the individual, signifying release f
chy into a world of flux. All aspects of
Tocqueville fears that post-aristocratic
portend a social void wherein known so
are torn asunder. The "abyss" figures re
representation of such swirling disi
attempts to grasp democracy to gain so
it against aristocracy as its point of dep
only that aristocracy can tell us some
point of origin, but that it haunts youn
tion. The French, he fears, are "carried
of democracy, but nevertheless "'we obs
the ruins still in sight on the bank wh

21 Ibid., 599.
22 For de Tocqueville, a person in aristocracy is embedded in a social web that
reflects the past and defines the future. But in democracy, the individual "comes
from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God."
Unfettered by institutionalized social ties, the individual is "seen but for a
moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then he is lost" (Demrnoc-
racy, 487). Indeed, the abyss is what de Tocqueville first sees menacing the
French as they stumble into democracy, and is the peril against which he first
attempts to theorize democracy. He warns in The Ancien Rdgime that the Revolu-
tion "shook the foundations" and "some supposed that this unknown power...
was destined to lead human society to complete and final dissolution" (3). In his
speech in the Chamber of Deputies on January 27, 1848, he describes a "disor-
der" that "has entered deeply into men's minds," and urges the government to
"change the spirit of the government, for that spirit, I repeat, is leading you to the
abyss" (Democracy, Appendix III, 753, 758).

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 558 LAURA JANARA

ward-facing toward
from Europe, react t
chides them for bein
as they seek to erase
as pioneers of a new
the then popular my
queville, "no man can
it has left an indelibl
sent.25
De Tocqueville herein posits democracy as a subject, a culture
with its own memory and imagination, and with conscious and uncon-
scious drives reflected in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants. De
Tocqueville's democracy-as-subject reacts to the very world-transfor-
mations it instigates with an ambivalent array of what he calls the
"passions." These include anger and resentment that fomented the
rejection of infantilizing aristocratic hierarchy, a yearning for individ-
ual autonomy and freedom that inspire the central democratic passion
for the idea of equality, and fear of re-engulfment by aristocratic
authority. But democracy's passions also include unacknowledged
desire for what it has lost: the certainty once provided by aristocratic
(inter)dependency in which every one has a place. In democracy, there
is fear of the burden and loneliness imposed by atomistic freedom. It
is democracy's central passion for equality, what de Tocqueville iden-
tifies as its "nodal point," that triggers this partially repressed,
ambivalent psychological state. As the reigning ideology of emergent
democracy, it stirs in people the desire to escape the domination of
aristocratic structures for autonomy and self-rule. But this separation
also leaves them afloat in a swirling sea of uncertainty that foments
anxiety and longing for authority and assurances. As Mark Reinhardt
has remarked, "democracy's distinctive and potentially powerful ways
of breaking up order can make people-whether they are its partici-
pants or observers, friends or foes-uneasy."26 Democracy in America
helps us to see how these competing but only partly acknowledged
passions are manifest in all dimensions of democratic society, pressing
inhabitants to structure their social and political world in contradictory
ways to mollify their ambivalent feelings. In the throes of these mixed

23 Ibid., 13.
24 See Terence Ball, "The Myth of Adam and American Identity," Reappraising
Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); and Russell Hanson,
The Democratic Imagination in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1985), 124, and chapter 4.
25 Tocqueville, Democracy, 48.
26 Mark Reinhardt, The Art of Being Free: Taking Liberties with Tocqueville, Marx,
and Arendt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 21.

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 Democracy's Family Values 559

passions, de Tocqueville's democracy c

chy, freedom with constraint and indiv
submission.
As part of understanding the psychic complexities and paradoxes
of modern democracy, de Tocqueville examines family relations. It is
the "white" American bourgeois household to which he turns-a
form that best approximates the governing mid-nineteenth-century US
and European normative ideal of "family." De Tocqueville has been
criticized not only for focusing exclusively on this mode of family life
but for treating it as universal, thereby ignoring family experiences of
"white" and "black" workers and farmers and others.27 But what de
Tocqueville explores are the psycho-political dynamics of the reigning
ideal version of family-a set of dominant cultural assumptions about
what family should be-and, in so doing, he goes a significant dis-
tance to illuminate something very real about US democracy's cultural
dynamics. The effect is not a social-historical account of modes of
family life but, rather, a nuanced portrait of sensibilities shaping and
reflecting the US democratic imagination.
Family and gender relations emerge in Democracy in America as
key venues for democracy to assert for itself, against its flux, a histori-
cally new structure and order, alongside expressions of individual
autonomy and equality-based mutual recognition. In these family rela-
tions there is evidence of the unacknowledged psychological
ambivalence stimulated by post-aristocratic democracy's freedom and
flux. Rather than consistently choosing the egalitarian option of seiz-
ing the burden of freedom and attendant flux, de Tocqueville's Ameri-
cans let their fear of flux temper equality with structured relations of
inequality, and principles of universalism with practices of hierarchical
social differentiation. Though de Tocqueville displays only partial
consciousness of this, it is evident in his text, the excavation of which
unveils something still important and relevant to us today: namely, that
the democratic passion for the idea of equality stimulates a historically
novel consciousness about gender. On one hand, "equality" as a prin-
ciple raises hope for the genuine elimination of sex-based inequalities.
On the other, paradoxically, democracy's ideology of equality does not
translate in any simple way into equality between the sexes but,
instead, stimulates an anxious reaction against the idea of leveling the
sexes, because it seems to contribute to a deep loss of order and mean-
ing-the fall into the abyss. That is, amid democracy's attack on class

27 See, for instance, Linda Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's
Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," Journal of American History 75
(1988), 9-50; and Shapiro, "Literary Geography," 27-28, 35-36; but also note
Shapiro's attention to the prevailing discursive ideal of family and its "romantic
imagery"( 29).

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560 LAURA JANARA

stratification which e
der difference seems
gent democracy may
ence and the inscript
an alternative to a ne
into disarray.28 In D
abyss of disorder; so
relations for ordering
many insights, and
democracy, family an

Democracy as Self-M
De Tocqueville begins
by observing father-s
ical of the ancien rig
itly political terms, h
political and familia
that in aristocracy, f
predictability and las
family constitutes a
chain of command t
linked one to the oth
next on the chains....
ciations with a leade
through the father; i

28 Scholars have illustrate

discourse invested heavi
Barbara Welter, "The Cu
terly 18 (1966), 151-74.
paramount feature of po
to universality raised ho
the law. Viewed from w
tant legacy may well hav
(Joan Landes, Women and
[Ithaca: Cornell Univer
through French and Eng
Strategies in the Afterm
University Press, 1991])
figure especially since th
1789 egalitarian challeng
women's newly vague re
man as monster came to
about women in the pub
French Revolution [Ber
90-91).

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 Democracy's Family Values 561

a serf, the father "is given a political

author and support of the family; he is also
Democracy transforms this political fa
the very destruction and rejection of such
mand. De Tocqueville reports that in d
before the law and "adopt the general
right to judge everything for oneself."30
tions reflect this new politics based o
sovereignty, and inspired by the desire t
cal structures. As such, "in the Unite
sovereignty of the people is not an isolat
is to "look after himself in matters of his own exclusive concern."
This principle of individual sovereignty directs both public and private
life; as 'the great maxim on which civil and political society in the
United States" is built, "the father of a family applies it to his chil-
dren, a master to his servants, a township to those under its administra-
tion, a province to the townships, a state to the provinces, and the
Union to the states."3
Now that aristocracy's paternal "master and magistrate have van-
ished; the father remains."32 This father exercises a kind of "domestic
dictatorship" necessitated only by his son's childhood vulnerability.
As the boy grows, "the reins of filial obedience are daily slackened."
He is soon "master of his thoughts" and "becomes responsible for his
own behavior."33" At "the close of boyhood," the young American
male "is a man and begins to trace out his own path."34 And for de
Tocqueville being "manly" means, above all, as for other modern
republican thinkers, practising fraternal self-rule; that is, equality-
based active citizenship.35 In democracy, this is "man's estate," his
birthright.36 The American father, anticipating his son's independence
as a given, "abdicates without fuss" to this fellow citizen, acting no
longer as intermediary but merely as "a citizen older and richer than
his sons."37 For their part, sons understand that their claim to indepen-

29 Tocqueville, Democracy, 586. Like the king, "the father is not only the political
head of the family but also the instrument of tradition, the interpreter of custom,
and the arbiter of mores" (587).
30 Ibid., 587. So, the family in its "aristocratic sense, no longer exists" (585).
31 Ibid., 397.
32 Ibid., 588.
33 Ibid., 585.
34 Ibid.
35 See, for example, ibid., 57. The idea of "manliness" as republican self-ru
vades the text; Machiavelli, Rousseau and Wollstonecraft also appeal to
of manliness to define their healthy republican political actors.
36 Ibid., 585.
37 Ibid., 585, 586.

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 562 LAURA JANARA

dence and freedom w

this legacy as "men"-
zenship, "an incontest
father and son, since
will be his own master
possession which is h
him."38
De Tocqueville also
US, to illustrate furth
rule. In aristocracy, h
of individual siblings,
are seen as "by no me
vocably fix the rank
"eldest son, who will
rights, becomes the c
brothers." For his si
dence." Reliant upon
members of the arist
interests are connecte
are seldom in harmon
children "perfectly e
shall consider, de Tocq
"brothers" is significa
mon memories and th
draw brothers, in a d
divided, but their hea
Among brothers in d
mutually respectful m
which de Tocqueville c
canism. Here, too, is e
Tocqueville describes a
It is with these egali
among brothers that
analysis. He finds in t
healthy equality, mu
broader historical traje
canism.41 But recall t

38 Ibid., 585. Further ent

gone, inherited parcels of
share land as mutually re
39 Ibid., 588.
40 Ibid., 588-89.
41 Claiming a strong public-private distinction in de Tocqueville's thought, Mathie
goes so far as to suggest that de Tocqueville does not "attach the slightest politi-

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 Democracy's Family Values 563

racy's potentialities; in Democracy in

pains to provide us with portraits of
democracy and the dynamics that fome
to warn the French against democracy's
ity tyranny, human mediocrity, passiv
and state despotism. What, then, of the
democracy? If, as de Tocqueville says,
same sensibilities that shape the rest
exhibit democracy's dangerous as we
potentialities. But here de Tocqueville
portrait of US family relations does exh
racy's reactionary tendencies. But he on
by his own anxiety from his guiding d
unhealthy democracy, and from his con
that of the individual-is the prime hum
To explore this problem, we must firs
Tocqueville's account of democracy's
exaggerated. In describing the transitio
manhood, de Tocqueville repeatedly
becoming "his own master." Yet there i
de Tocqueville is silent on the matter of
Democracy in America, indeed as a cent
queville insists that democratic citizens
the habits and skills of association in or
into a genuinely "manly" republic. But i
the US, sons somehow acquire the statu
zen merely as a matter of course. Des
individualism and reckless materialism
of the citizenry going uneducated, he a
slides directly into manhood as "in Am
lescence."'42 Put another way, de Tocqu
tence on a stage of apprenticeship in re
that males automatically come to embod
that myth of the American Adam.43
man of new beginnings who somehow
American soil to exemplify republica
However, this myth contradicts de Toc
agency, as well as his account of the
thwarting democracy's health, dynamics
consciously allay. In so contradicting hi

cal or even social significance to the fraternal

cratic family" ("God, Woman, and Morality,"
42 Tocqueville, Democracy, 585.
43 See note 24.

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 564 LAURA JANARA

betrays the possibility

not fully attained sel
hyperbolic claims of
hearts of de Tocquevi
desire for it, is comp
republican self-rule s
for the comforts of
seems swept up in th
The unhealthy demo
are partly concealed in
addresses only male
tions. While fathers,
expect citizenship as
enjoy the same degr
chapter on "The Thr
example, de Tocquev
gious form of inequa
North, conspicuously
sioned by the idea o
United States is prou
this renders him "pr
genuine universalism
lates the "white" Nor
of egalitarian flux an
these anxious "white
cans. In his lamenting
European-Americans,
Anglo-American: "Th
the first inhabitant
them in advance to inevitable destruction. The true owners of this con-
tinent are those who know how to take advantage of its riches."45
Apparently the democratic right of self-mastery is reserved only for
some in democracy's public life, and, as we shall see, in family life.
De Tocqueville was also somewhat aware that what political
equality was being enjoyed by European-American males in the mid-
nineteenth century, by way of an expanded suffrage, was simultane-
ously being undercut by a new kind of class hierarchy shaped by

44 Tocqueville, Democracy, 356, 357.

45 Alexis de Tocqueville, "Fortnight in the Wilds," Journey to America, ed.
J. P. Mayer, trans. by George Lawrence (New York: Anchor, 1971), 354. On de
Tocqueville and US racism as a social and political hierarchy within democracy,
see Laura Janara, "Fear of Falling: Tocqueville and Beaumont on US Genealogy,
Democracy and Racism," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American
Political Science Association, 1999.

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Democracy's Family Values 565

wealth-polarizing capitalism. He writes

man has spent a considerable portion o
thought is permanently fixed on the o
has contracted certain fixed habits which it can never shake off. In a
word, he no longer belongs to himself"46 Indeed, in his chapter,
"How an Aristocracy May be Created by Industry," de Tocqueville
observes capitalism's consequences for the character of both workers
and owners, consequences that undercut their development as healthy
republican citizens. Elsewhere he claims that "commerce," "indus-
try" and democracy largely go hand-in-hand, but does not assess
whether capitalism's companion is healthy or unhealthy democracy.
Nonetheless, there is notable evidence in Democracy in America that
democracy's innate pressures toward materialism and competitive
envy can encourage economic relations that foster political and social
hierarchy rather than healthy egalitarianism.47
Consider also de Tocqueville's account of "master-servant" and
"master-worker" relations in democracy, at the heart of which lies the
fact that not every male is master of himself, nor does being a "mas-
ter" necessarily signify the attainment of republican health.48 Right on
the heels of this account of the new, complex psychology marking
economic relations in democracy, de Tocqueville says he wants "to
carry the argument further and consider what happens within the fam-
ily."49 As for the study of master-servant and owner-worker relations,
it characterizes democracy as a social state laced with a psychology of
denial grounded in the prevailing passion for the idea of equality and
its basis in contract. While contracts in democracy are seemingly con-
stituted voluntarily by free and equal individuals, each his own "mas-
ter," they involve hidden forms of authority and subjugation that leave
men living a "sort of fancied equality" amongst themselves despite
the "actual inequality of their lives."5o
With this insight, de Tocqueville commences his analysis of
"what happens within the family" in democracy, already hinting that
the happily republican relations among bourgeois fathers, sons and

46 Tocqueville, Democracy, 555; emphasis added.

47 For a fuller account of how class stratification is reconstituted in democracy
through capitalism as a response to the imagined dangers of equality and flux, see
Laura Janara, "Commercial Capitalism and the Democratic Psyche: Tocqueville
and Citizenship Under Siege," History of Political Thought (forthcoming).
48 Tocqueville, Democracy, 582.
49 Ibid., 584-85.
50 De Tocqueville points out that owners have power and choices; workers must sell
their labour to survive (Democracy, 555-58). In his chapter on honour, he argues
that social states boast unique conceptions of honour which reproduce the power
arrangements of the society. Prevailing opinion and governing mores render legit-
imate the prevailing power dynamics.

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 566 LAURA JANARA

brothers as fraternal
family life. In this f
among the males, see
by his Americans, a
inequalities that dist
other, as well as the
that the culture's pre
an illusory creation o
ciples. We can imagi
reassure democracy's
the domineering aris
mit to its humiliating
ism that has replaced
nal bonds and shared
alone. But the econo
shall see, the hyper-d
in US democracy, sugg
ture is imagined, and p
primogeniture, fealty
authoritarian, provide
of birth.
Significantly, the equality said to underlie democracy's father-son
and fraternal relations in the family is no absolute equality, but one
offset by male differentiation from the female. The men de Toc-
queville describes may all be citizens who are de jure equal before the
law and in public life, but the women with whom they comprise their
families and the polity are denied this status. Undoubtedly this sexism
reassures the men that their political liberty is irretractable because it
is based in their irretractable maleness, rather than in the vagaries of
wealth, for instance."5 Still, despite the glaring inequality between
males and females, these men consider themselves individual mem-
bers of a healthy egalitarian society rooted in the ideas of individual
sovereignty and self-rule. De Tocqueville's first chapter on family rela-
tions suggests that democracy's males have been victorious in con-
quering aristocratic hierarchy and attaining autonomous self-mastery.
But this republican fraternalism in the family is not extended to oth-
ers-female others, just as equality in "public" life is likewise denied
to females, non-"whites," workers and the poor. De Tocqueville's sub-
sequent chapters on family relations in democracy help us see that dif-

51 US racism which has posited "race" as biological would likewise reassure

"white" men that they could never be denied full citizenship, since their "white-
ness" could not be taken from them. De Tocqueville's analysis does not include
the US South; he acknowledges but sets aside the matter of unenfranchised
"black" males in the North.

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Democracy's Family Values 567

ferentiating and excluding mollifies the

of post-aristocratic democracy, but i
pathology rather than health. If family
share a common ethos, what do the sex
exclusions say about this ethos?

Girls: Democracy's Shadow Figure

In de Tocqueville's ensuing chapters on
the girl emerges as a shadow figure tha
heart of the democratic psyche. She f
democracy's quest for equality, autonom
drove the rejection of hierarchical arist
democracy's anxiety over separating fro
on the other. The status of the girl in d
the messy, compromised, psychic tra
democracy, utterly sheltered and infan
but whose potential freedom, equality a
threaten deeply uncomfortable post-rev
all, if she were to become a republican
tive self-rule, gender differentiation as
social order and remaining sources of f
while she is perhaps the most represent
turing its paradoxes, so too is she an an
her independence, autonomy and libe
chaos that horrifies the anxiously ambiv
In his first chapter on family, de Toc
political, "public" language of "citize
testable right" to describe relations b
among brothers in democracy. When
Girls in the United States," questions
sovereignty and self-mastery take on o
anew upon "burgeoning desires," "tyr
and self-"control." Surely here de Tocqueville reveals his own
ambivalence about democracy as he projects onto females fear of
social mayhem, while seeing in males the courageous democratic
quest for liberty. Still, he does not consider these new problems he
sees in relation to girls to be anomalies found in the "otherwise"
democratic family. Rather, they are for him a constitutive feature of
democratic family life, and consistent with the mentality he diagnoses
in the democratic social state more broadly. In fact, it is the American
girl and her destiny as a "wife" that takes us closer to the heart of the
complexities of de Tocqueville's portrait of democracy and its dis-
parate potentialities. De Tocqueville opens his chapter on "Girls" by
reiterating his claim that in a given social state, family life, politics

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 568 LAURA JANARA

and society are groun

Protestant nations ra
own behavior" than C
found among girls f
gained the right of s
countries, "political h
erty into the family
their thoughts is, in m
While appreciating t
girl, de Tocqueville
own, as he casts thi
"tyranny" that must
in America, democrat
as it is by the pressur
ing a citizenry mea
democracy's culture c
ing in the very same
gerated and unjustif
male fraternalism in
maturity seems to grow
lost aristocratic orde
rears its head. What
democracy manages w
jecting them onto gir
males and excluded
assigned a role of dom
order to recapture for
titudes of structured social order, and a well-entrenched cultural
morality.
In France, de Tocqueville observes, the relics of the ancien
regime still prescribe a "timid, withdrawn, almost cloistered educa-
tion" for girls. Though suitable to a rigid regime in which a girl's
security is carefully guaranteed, such a protective education leaves
girls "unguided and unaided" amid the turmoil of democracy.53
Rather than preparing them for genuine independence, it produces
"virgin innocence amid burgeoning desires," a "chaste" mind and
"naive and artless graces."54 In democracy, the firm hand of aristoc-
racy is gone and the girl encounters an uncertain world. According to
de Tocqueville's observations, US democracy responds by structuring
the life of the girl in ways that are fraught with all the tensions that

52 Tocqueville, Democracy, 590.

53 Ibid., 591.
54 Ibid., 590, 591.

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Democracy's Family Values 569

mark democracy's broader struggle to ov

Like her brothers, the American girl lear
Tocqueville describes as "manly," apparen
of a republican capacity for self-rule."
tantism combines with "a very free cons
society" so that a girl enjoys some of the
as more independence at an earlier ag
imagine: "Before she has completely
already thinks for herself, speaks freely,
the same time that de Tocqueville admir
omy and independence of mind, bold
"almost frightened" by it.57 Democracy's
as she does from the limiting structure
kind of dexterous worldliness. He writes
that such an education has its dangers".58
that, against the backdrop of old Europe,
exacerbate democracy's flirtation with s
queville admires the independence of Am
that in democracy, female "youth w
restrained, customs fleeting, public opin
paternal authority weak, and a husband'
all the disorder inseparable from democ
freedoms of the girl must be delimited,
is taken to signify post-aristocratic may
the anxiety that this throbbing conditio
comes the likewise anxious American e
self-control, to make society "more peac
But de Tocqueville notes that, never
about their girls in terms of independen
must be a great deal of individual fr
Americans "have calculated that there w
in woman the most tyrannical passions."
the girl both triggers fears of utter
respect as a subject of the healthy democ
such, Americans set aside aristocracy's
on the strength of her free determinat
which have been shaken or overthrow
shelter and infantilize this girl, "they ar

55 Ibid., 593.
56 Ibid., 590.
57 Ibid., 591.
58 Ibid., 592.
59 Ibid., 591.
60 Ibid., 592.

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 570 LAURA JANARA

cious knowledge of ev
from her, they want
avoid it, and they are
guard her innocence t
"vices and dangers o
the omnipresent han
ety's dangers "withou
full of confidence in
as a moderating and d
ther to guide her in
morals pure," "even i
control of herself."
sures," "and her reaso
thus learns to engage
not a republican one
and self-delimiting on
that democracy fears

Desire and Fear: Con

De Tocqueville himse
He admired his gran
sister-in-law for att
midst of serious pu
domestic counterpart
suited him while her
tions, he writes of
"strongly prejudiced
those who systematic
of interesting us by d
less, she pleased me

61 Ibid., 591.
62 Ibid., 590.
63 Ibid., 591.
64 De Tocqueville is aware that this education develops "judgment at the cost of
imagination," makes "women chaste and cold rather than tender and loving com-
panions of men" and the "charms of private life are often less." But he con-
cludes that such loss is a "secondary evil" which "should be faced for the sake
of the greater good," namely, order. He normally deems political liberty the
greatest good, but is apparently willing to bow to the demands of social order in
relation to gender. He charges that, "At the point we have now reached, we no
longer have a choice" regarding questions of passion, unleashed as they are by
the "institutions and mores of democracy" (Democracy, 592).
65 Andre Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, trans, by Lydia Davis with Robert
Hemenway (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 47, 50.

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 Democracy's Family Values 571

mending more adornment, he remarks th

ject [of public affairs] struck me greatly
of Paris workmen later proving accur
democratic culture, then, de Tocqueville
sensibilities of aristocracy and democracy
independent and public-minded female,
to dissolve structures of gender differe
forts that a differentiated femaleness ca
America, he characterizes US bourgeoi
paradoxical status, both "very dependent
and nowhere enjoying "a higher station"
and revered.
De Tocqueville's text reveals that US democracy employs a sec-
ond strategy in gender relations to contain the perceived threat of soci-
etal chaos. In addition to educating girls to "control" themselves,
women are also "cloistered" in their husband's homes after marriage.
While "all the men in a democracy either enter politics or practice
some calling" outside the household, "the wives" stay "at home and
watch in person very closely over the details of domestic economy."67
Wives are also to keep the faith of religion to foster a pervasive moral-
ity at a time when social flux threatens moral decay. So while "reli-
gion is often powerless to restrain men in the midst of innumerable
temptations which fortune offers," it "Lreigns supreme in the souls of
the women, and it is women who shape mores."'68 In this role, a
woman is both oddly self-ruling and dependent, both powerful and
subordinate. At the same time that her culture attenuates her freedoms,
democracy's ideological passion for equality compels all (including
her) to see her as her own "master," consciously choosing for herself
this paradoxical status.
De Tocqueville certainly recognizes the paradox in stunting the
freedom of American girls in restrictive "bonds of matrimony." As he
points out, following her education in independence, the American girl
"loses her independence forever." In the US, where a girl experiences
"less constraint" than anywhere, "a wife submits to stricter obliga-
tions. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and
pleasure; for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister."69 De Toc-
queville makes sense of this by suggesting that "Americans have
applied to the sexes the great principle of political economy which
now dominates industry. They have carefully separated the functions

66 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, trans, by

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (New York: Meridian, 1959), 148, 149.
67 Tocqueville, Democracy, 598.
68 Ibid., 291.
69 Ibid., 592.

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 572 LAURA JANARA

of man and of woman

performed." This is no
US society has const
queville reports that "
been taken constantly
two sexes, and both ar
are never the same." S
idea of sex equality, cl
the same, they should
sure and public affairs
"is far from being the
ity which can be brou
cans have never belie
mine the husband's aut
the family." So despite
the little society comp
ety of politics, the aim
[sic] necessary powers
queville describes-ad
and austere powers of
that lead them to foster
ridden, anxiety-produc
Public opinion helps e
cratic order that seeks
social order and struct
of sex differentiation
finds restrictive opini
lished"; she is "soon co
from the usages accep
putting in danger he
social existence." A yo
world" yet understand
of marriage is an ever
accepting that for her
self-consciously "choo
of rebellion, these wom
that eclipse females'
seeming "voluntary ac
domestic interests and

70 Ibid., 601.
71 Ibid., 592, 601; emphasis added.
72 Ibid., 592, 593.
73 Ibid., 593.
74 Ibid., 596, 592.

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 Democracy's Family Values 573

pants in the cultural imagination that p

and fears the erasure of gender differe
them to accept as good their domesti
American women and men collude in
For men, controlling their wives reassur
hierarchical order still exists at the same
ternity as evidence of their republican t
hierarchy. The women, likewise, breath
that authoritarian society is vanquished,
ation. But they fear what it would mean
structured social differentiation to disso
Thus de Tocqueville can charge: "I am far
constraint of public opinion imposes th
women as soon as they are married. Of
which imposes this sacrifice on them
found American women regarding co
usurpation of their rights or feeling th
submitting to it." Surely this is an over
period agitated for increased political r
reform. But what he captures in his ass
democratic society's reactive desire for
social structures, a desire which causes
in the free relinquishment of their will,
yoke themselves rather than to escape fr
These gender relations thus exempl
ambivalence of post-aristocratic democr
in the life of the American female, de T
leitmotif of modern democracy: the pa
and inequality, freedom and constraint.
natural" for girls to begin their lives a
quently volunteer for subjection is to b
permeating the psychology of democrac
obscures the inequality in other socia
tions. So when de Tocqueville observes t
the social inferiority of woman to cont
to raise her morally and intellectually t
concludes with irony that they have "w
conception of democratic progress."77
As we may suspect, the station ass
does not betoken happiness for them

75 Ibid., 593.
76 Ibid., 602.
77 Ibid., 603.

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 574 LAURA JANARA

the "strength required

may say that it is the v
courage to sacrifice it
come for that."78 She
sen it," and is thus "b
dle-class woman is fur
she is moulded to repr
differentiation and st
democracy's cultural r
she continually stimula
hierarchical world wh
to individual sovereig
racy's post-aristocratic
gating women to the
society, American dem
women's deep influe
desire-undoubtedly t
somehow, authority-
newfound autonomy.80

Marriage and Sex in

For de Tocqueville, sex
bered by rules of "b
thoughts that sprin
"restraint" that "doe
"ephemeral and cland
woman who "wish to
aristocratic social sy
including "the ties of
the tyranny of opinion
defied separates them
"taste and inclination
wretchedness" in hom
arranged marriages th
that leave hearts free

78 Ibid., 593.
79 Ibid., 593, 594.
80 Precisely because these women are granted limited authority in the household,
their care of others must typically be imbued with enormous energy that may
come to look all too much like emasculating control.
81 Tocqueville, Democracy, 596, 597.
82 Ibid., 597.
83 Ibid., 596.

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 Democracy's Family Values 575

tured by such matters extraneous to lo

romantic intrigue does not unsettle it.
In democracy, in contrast, family
identity do not dictate marriage ties be
Rather, "paternal authority," "public
tem" accept marriage based on person
natural and usual order of things."84
reigns supreme it seems to threaten so
Tocqueville observes that in the US, wh
whomever they desire, this very fr
keep[s]" a couple "by each other's side
morals before marriage very difficult.""
the US differs dramatically from that i
severe norms mark American sexual tie
tures instability in sexual relations.
European democracies have separated fr
Tocqueville writes that no social order
prevails in democratizing Europe beca
not so highly structured, it exhibits more
"almost all the disorders of society a
hearth and not far from the nuptial b
against the legacy of a controlling, conf
whose ashes they build their democr
taste for disorder, restlessness of spirit
contrast, in the US, where democracy
tocracy rather than in the heat of revo
desire guide hearts and minds, as exe
arrangements designed to re-invoke, ra
order. Such conservatism is the hallma
cratic flux. Fearing gender chaos as one
of equality, Americans foment stability
sexes and structuring sexual relations in
European man, "when the American ret
tics to the bosom of the family, he imm
of order and peace. There all his pleasu
his joys innocent and quiet, and as the
happiness, he easily forms the habit of
as his tastes.''86
De Tocqueville attributes this "severi
fact that they "regard marriage as a con

84 Ibid., 597.
85 Ibid., 596, 595.
86 Ibid., 291.

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 576 LAURA JANARA

burdensome but every

to fulfil, because they
not to bind themselve
of American marriag
master-servant (and m
which the idea of equa
and equality for the
equality and its quest
however, contractaria
cal and psychological
defined in contractual
between self-ruling in
are rooted unwaverin
home and in public b
unyielding public opin
husband and wife ackn
they tend also to cons
responsible for choosi
every bit as much as a
prescribed set of ob
expected of her," like
is little alternative.
American women ar
than are American me
ditions" could never "m
his morals a less dang
opportunity to attack
selves, there are at th
great many honest wo
wark against democra
their own lack of chas
"Americans think noth
bands' infidelity doe
national morality."90
are not about entrenc
sovereignty that demo
in large part express t
cratic turmoil that un
nify. America's sex-ba
convention designed

87 Ibid., 596.
88 Ibid., 598.
89 Ibid., 602.
90 Ibid., 603, 598.

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 Democracy's Family Values 577

Tocqueville's ambivalent conclusion t

while leading "to deplorable individu
vent the body social from being strong

Conclusion

When de Tocqueville claims that the same sensibilities govern a

areas of a democratic social state, including family life, he helps us to
begin to excavate the paradoxical contours of the democratic psyche.
De Tocqueville himself does not always grasp the implications of his
analyses, but his consciously rendered arguments together with the
rich resources of his text suggest that post-aristocratic democracy is
shaped by a pervasive assumption of universal equality, autonomy an
individual freedom; a genuine and principled desire for them; and a
competing reactionary willingness to reconstitute ordered relations of
hierarchy. This re-interpretation of Democracy in America enables u
to conceive how in modern Western democracy, amid its historically
unprecedented expressions of equality and self-rule, appear new, sub-
tler forms of hierarchy based in sexism, alongside the inheren
inequalities of capitalism and racism.
What de Tocqueville helps us grasp is that in the aftermath of
aristocracy's class order, gender, and thus family relations, become
key terrain for rebuilding social structure and for differentiation ami
the flux that democratic equality heralds. At the same time, the demo
cratic passion for the idea of equality compels Americans to proceed
as though husband and wife, like master and servant, owner and
worker, are self-governing equals, while concealing the psychologi-
cally complex underbelly of the contractual relations.92 Let us then
take seriously de Tocqueville's central but overlooked observation
about family life: that "certain great social principles" shape life
"everywhere" or "nowhere"-an insight that insists we recognize the
forms of domination and acquiescence that complicate the quest for
genuine egalitarian self-rule in a democracy.
De Tocqueville partly criticizes and partly appreciates his Ameri-
cans' conservative response to democratic flux. That such flux is i
fact dangerous remains undemonstrated. What is clear is that this con
servative reaction feeds that which de Tocqueville ultimately fear
most: the tendency of democracy's inhabitants to be politically passive
and thereby to enable state despotism. That is, so long as male "citi-

91 Ibid., 598.
92 This invokes feminist critiques of liberal democratic contractarianism, consent
and their implications for citizenship, including Carole Pateman's The Disorder
of Women.: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1989).

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578 LAURA JANARA

zens" have subordinat

and non-"whites") to r
the subjugation they w
will be that much mo
calls a "tutelary" state
pain of submission to a
de Tocqueville partiall
gender relations to all
"solution" endangers
citizenship as the exp
for what he most fear
by a gently domineeri

93 See Dorothy Dinnerstei

and Human Malaise (New
94 Today, the danger is mo

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