HOW THE AMERICANS UNDERSTAND THE EQUALITY OF MAN AND WOMAN
I HAVE shown how democracy destroys or modifies the various inequalities to which society gives rise. But is that the end of it? Or is it not finally beginning to affect the great inequality between man and woman, which has seemed until now to be based upon eternal foundations in nature?
I think that the social movement that is bringing son and father, servant and master, and, in general, inferior and superior closer to the same level is raising woman and will make her more and more the equal of man.
On this point, however, more than any other, I feel the need to make myself clear, for there is no subject about which the present century’s crude and undisciplined imagination has allowed itself freer rein.
There are people in Europe who, confounding the various attributes of the sexes, claim to make man and woman into creatures not only equal but alike. They ascribe the same functions to both, assign them the same duties, and grant them the same rights. They mix them in all things: work, pleasure, affairs. It is easy to see how trying in this way to make one sex equal to the other degrades them both and how the only thing that can ever come of such a crude mixture of nature’s works is weak men and disreputable women.
This was not how Americans understood the kind of democratic equality that can be established between woman and man. They believed that because nature had made man and woman so different in physical and moral constitution, its clear purpose was to assign different uses to the diverse faculties of each. They judged, moreover, that progress lay not in making dissimilar beings do virtually identical things but in seeing to it that each acquitted itself of its task in the best possible way. Americans applied to the two sexes the great principle of political economy that dominates today’s industry. They carefully divided the functions of man and woman in order to carry out the great work of society more effectively.
No country in the world has been more persistent than America in tracing clearly separated lines of action for the two sexes or in wanting both to proceed at an equal pace but along two permanently different paths. You do not see American women managing the family’s outside affairs, conducting a business, or entering the sphere of politics, but neither do you find American women forced to do hard labor or engage in any of the arduous activities that require the development of physical strength. There are no families so poor as to constitute exceptions to this rule.
If the American woman is not permitted to escape from the quiet circle of domestic occupations, neither is she ever compelled to leave it.
That is why American women, who often display a manly intelligence and an energy that is nothing less than virile, generally maintain a very delicate appearance and always remain women in manners, although they sometimes reveal themselves to be men in mind and heart.
Americans, moreover, never assumed that the consequence of democratic principles would be to topple the husband from power and confuse lines of authority within the family. They believed that every association needs a leader in order to be effective and that the natural leader of the conjugal association was the man. Hence they did not deny him the right to direct his helpmate, and they believed that in the small society consisting of husband and wife, as in the larger political society, the purpose of democracy is to regulate and legitimate necessary powers and not to destroy all power.
This is not an opinion held by one sex and contested by the other.
American women did not, in my view, appear to regard conjugal authority as a felicitous usurpation of their rights, nor did they believe that it was degrading to submit to it. On the contrary, it seemed to me that in a way they prided themselves on the voluntary sacrifice of their will and demonstrated their greatness by freely accepting the yoke rather than seeking to avoid it. That, at any rate, was the sentiment expressed by the most virtuous among them. The others remain silent, and in the United States, one does not hear adulterous wives loudly insisting on the rights of women while trampling the most sacred duties underfoot.
It has often been observed that in Europe the flattery that men lavish on women conceals a certain contempt. Although the European male may frequently allow himself to be enslaved by women, he plainly never thinks of these women in a sincere way as his equals.
In the United States, men seldom praise women but daily give evidence of the esteem in which they hold them.
American men consistently demonstrate full confidence in the reasoning abilities of their helpmates and deep respect for their freedom. They deem a woman’s mind as capable of discovering the naked truth as a man’s and her heart as stalwart in adhering to it, and they have never sought to protect her virtue any more than his behind a shelter of prejudice, ignorance, and fear.
In Europe, where men so readily submit to the despotic sway of women, they nevertheless seem to deny them some of the principal attributes of humankind and look upon them as seductive but incomplete beings. What is most surprising is that European women ultimately come to see themselves in the same light and are not far from considering it a privilege that they are allowed to seem frivolous, weak, and fearful. American women insist on no such rights.
In regard to morals, moreover, it might seem that we have granted man a peculiar sort of immunity, so that there is one kind of virtue for his use and another for his wife’s, and the same act can appear in the public eye as a crime or merely a peccadillo.
Americans are unfamiliar with this iniquitous apportionment of duties and rights. In their eyes the seducer is as dishonored as his victim.
It is true that American men seldom show women the eager attention that is lavished on them in Europe, yet their conduct invariably proves that they assume women are virtuous and delicate, and they have such great respect for the moral freedom of women that in their presence every man minds his speech lest the women be obliged to listen to offensive language. In America, girls take long trips by themselves, without fear.
In the United States, lawmakers who have lessened the severity of nearly all provisions of the penal code punish rape by death, and no crime is more relentlessly pursued by public opinion. There is an explanation for this: since Americans cannot imagine anything more precious than a woman’s honor or more deserving of respect than her independence, they deem no punishment too severe for anyone who would deprive her of these things against her will.
In France, where the same crime incurs much milder punishments, it is often difficult to find a jury prepared to convict. Is this because of contempt for chastity or contempt for woman? I cannot help thinking that it is both.
Thus, Americans do not believe that man and woman have the duty or right to do the same things, but they hold both in the same esteem and regard them as beings of equal value but different destinies. Although they do not ascribe the same form or use to a woman’s courage as to a man’s, they never doubt her courage; and while they hold that a man and his helpmate should not always use their intelligence and their reason in the same way, at least they believe that a woman’s reason is as secure as a man’s and her intelligence just as clear.
Americans have thus allowed woman’s social inferiority to persist but have done all they could to raise her intellectual and moral level to parity with man, and in this respect they seem to me to have shown an admirable grasp of the true notion of democratic progress.
I, for one, do not hesitate to say that although women in the United States seldom venture outside the domestic sphere, where in some respects they remain quite dependent, nowhere has their position seemed to me to be higher. And now that I am nearing the end of this book, in which I have described so many considerable American accomplishments, if someone were to ask me what I think is primarily responsible for the singular prosperity and growing power of this people, I would answer that it is the superiority of their women.