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.Īn 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. 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. 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. 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.

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