The Hidden Labors of Mary Mottley, Madame de Tocqueville

Abstract

In Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville remarked on how marriage in a democratic society provides a haven in which the male citizen can find relief from the turbulence of public life (2000, 291). <1> Soothed by his wife and the placid domestic environment she provides, he argued, the husband in a democracy enters public life determined to reproduce there the calm orderliness he enjoys at home. This, for Tocqueville, was in sharp contrast to aristocratic marriages in Europe, which, as the products of chance or family alliance, were characterized by mutual contempt, rampant infidelity, and tumultuous passions that spilled over into public life.