TOCQUEVILLE, MILL, AND ARENDT ON WOMEN'S ROLE A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty ...

206 Pages·2012·0.98 MB·English

by  Lorraine Krall

FREEING WOMEN: TOCQUEVILLE, MILL, AND ARENDT ON WOMEN’S ROLE

A Dissertation
submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
of Georgetown University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in Government

By

Lorraine E. Krall, M.A.

Washington, D.C.
August 28, 2012
Copyright 2012 by Lorraine E. Krall
All Rights Reserved

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FREEING WOMEN: TOCQUEVILLE, MILL, AND ARENDT ON WOMEN’S ROLE

Lorraine E. Krall, M.A.

Thesis Advisor: Patrick Deneen, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

As modern democracies pushed to expand suffrage, they encountered the gendered
public/private split, eliciting new theories about the role of women: Alexis de
Tocqueville advocates women restricting themselves to the home in order to have a
stronger, indirect political impact. John Stuart Mill conversely maintains that women
should be equal to men and free to participate in public life; he largely leaves out the
family in his analysis. After women’s suffrage was an established fact, women began to
seek not only political rights, but also social equality, asking if sexual difference was
natural and how separate public and private ought to be. Hannah Arendt brings the
concerns of Mill and Tocqueville to bear on the developing question of the role of
women. She argues that public and private spheres should remain separate, but
ungendered: women, like men, should participate in politics; however, they should not
seek equality in every sphere of life. In the process of considering what it means for
women to be free and the limits of their freedom, Tocqueville, Mill and Arendt draw
upon and adjust the categories of nature and custom, sometimes discarding them
altogether. They see freedom as situated within both political participation and other
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associations, including the family. Insight into this modern question of women’s role
can be found by looking back to the ancients: Aristotle understands the need for a
plurality of interrelated associations in society, including the polis and the household.
He also sees that human nature, habits, and freedom are interwoven. And he recognizes
that despite the private role of women in his age, they nevertheless shared in human
nature and political potential in the same way men do. These concerns continue to be
relevant in contemporary life: civic republican recognition of a need for political
participation has much to offer liberalism. The best advocates of public freedom praise
it without denigrating private life, affirming the family and other forms of civil
association. For both women and men, sustainable freedom is bounded—situated within
civic and political associations and shaped by nature and custom.

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To my family, in spite of all your graduate school teasing,
especially Kathryn, who always gives the best advice,
and to Lewis--no one should have to date someone who is writing a dissertation.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The process of writing this dissertation has given rise to many debts, which it is my
privilege to acknowledge. First, I am grateful for the work of my committee members,
Patrick Deneen, Joshua Mitchell, Jean Elshtain, Peter Lawler, and Arlene Saxonhouse,
for reading this dissertation and for your frequent conversations with me about its
contents. Your insights have stimulated my own thinking.

In addition, I want to thank my colleagues at Georgetown, many of whom have read
various pieces of this dissertation and been part of the conversations from which these
ideas arose. Particularly, I want to thank Paula Olearnik, Mihaela Czobor-Lupp, Julia
Schwarz, Karen Rupprecht, and Lewis McCrary.

I am grateful to Kathryn Krall for reading, editing, and discussing the entire dissertation
with me. Thanks also to John Lee, Joe Prever, and Emily Krall for your editorial
assistance.

I want to thank the organizations whose generous funding eased that financial burdens
of graduate school and permitted the timely completion of this dissertation: the
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Tocqueville Forum, the Earhart Foundation, and the
Acton Institute.
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Many thanks to my family for your patience and support during this project and for
always offering me a room with a view in which to work.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1

Chapter 1
Tocqueville: Democracy and the Domestic ................................................................... 19

Chapter 2
Mill’s Woman: Mind, Individuality and Equality ......................................................... 63

Chapter 3
Women in Dark Times: Natality, Plurality, and the Pariah in Hannah Arendt……… 102

Chapter 4
The Ancient Answer to the Contemporary Problem: Aristotle on Women, Nature,
Custom and Reason………………………………………………………………….. 140

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………… 186

Works Cited ................................................................................................................. 192

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INTRODUCTION

“The freedom of society is thus made necessary by the fact that human vitalities have no
simply definable limits. The restraints which all human communities place upon human
impulses and ambitions are made necessary by the fact that all man’s vitalities tend to defy
any defined limits. But since the community may as easily become inordinate in its passion
for order, as may the various forces in the community in their passion for freedom, it is
necessary to preserve a proper balance between both principles, and to be as ready to
champion the individual against the community as the community against the individual.”

—Reinhold Niebuhr1

Today women’s political and social rights are mostly established, although discrimination
and the force of public opinion still hinder women from pursuing some vocations and
activities. Nevertheless, women are engaged in both public and private life. Couples pursue
creative solutions to balance their public and private commitments; sometimes men stay at
home or work part-time to contribute to the care of the children. These developments are
laudable, but women’s role is not by any means settled. Contemporary debates over issues
like attachment parenting and breast-feeding show that how women balance their public and
private roles is still at the forefront of the public imagination.
This dissertation examines women in their private and public roles, asking what can be done
to ensure freedom for women. I examine the move of women from subject to citizen
through political participation and the broader implications of this transition for politics.
Given the potential for changes to the democratic political order to be disruptive, I examine
the reflections of Tocqueville and Mill on who should enter politics, as well as Arendt’s
reflections on how women ought to engage in political life once they are there. My concern,

1 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a
Critique of Its Traditional Defense (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1960), 76–78.
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also a priority of Tocqueville, Mill, and Arendt, is ensuring that once women gain political
freedom, they not be transformed from citizens back to subjects. The insights that these
three thinkers offer regarding the transition to the right of women to participate in politics,
and the change in what the content of that political participation includes, are applicable
today as we ask how to preserve women’s citizenship. Because public and private cannot be
completely and neatly separated, understanding what women’s public freedom involves
requires defining women’s role in the family and the good of the individual.
There are two primary elements present in this dissertation: first, a consideration of the
accounts of women’s freedom seen in Tocqueville, Mill, and Arendt; second, an
examination of the theoretical underpinnings of their position. These two elements are
mutually enlightening: the foundations of these thinkers’ positions enlighten their view of
women; in addition, looking at something as concrete as their view of women provides an
entry point for us to better understand their theoretical grounds for freedom. Moreover,
critically examining their theoretical foundations allows me to propose an alternative basis
for women’s public participation.
I am attentive to the way in which Tocqueville, Mill, and Arendt found their notions of
women’s freedom on nature and history. Freedom, even in the most laissez-faire of political
systems, is never entirely unrestricted. There are limits on human freedom, including from
non-political sources. One of these limits is from what we call “nature,” which refers to
restrictions on our freedom that are rooted in the order of things that exists apart from
human intervention. James Ceaser writes of nature, “Roughly speaking, a foundation in
nature provides justification by reference to something in the structure of reality as it can be
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