Primary Source Assignment Unit 5

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1 Primary Source Assignment Unit 5 Name: Cynthia LaVert Maxwell Date: April 8 th , 2024 Source: Alexis de Tocqueville, “How Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes,” 1840 Ideally, your answers should be between four to five sentences for questions 3 to 10. For all answers, please make sure to write in complete, proofread, sentences. Question 1: What kind of document is it (letter, ad, newspaper, etc.)? Book, Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, 4 vol. (1835–40) Question 2: Who wrote or created the document? Who was that person? (this may require some of your own research) Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville was a French political strategists, diplomat, sociologist, scientist, philosopher, historian, and aristocrat…he was born July 1805 in Paris, France and died April 1859 in Cannes, France Question 3: What are your first impressions? (what did you think of this document? why?) I felt offended at the stereotype against women being a woman and of color. In this modern day and age that is violating my civil rights. Human rights were being violated back then however, administrators and law makers as well as enforcers justified the elitist to break “God’s laws as well as natural laws. Question 4: For whom was the document written or created? How do you know? (Consider the history that was discussed in this unit) Personally, I felt as though Mr. de Tocqueville wrote this piece mainly for America but knowing the French, British, Spain, and many others would view it too. He wrote what he saw but it is apparent to me that he did not interview the women to get their true feeling about their subservient position. Journals of various women prove that he was clearly wrong. I admit that there are and always will be physical differences in men and women but there’s no limits on women intellectually or morally. “It is not thus that the Americans understand that species of democratic equality which may be established between the sexes. They admit that as nature has appointed such wide differences between the physical and moral constitution of man and woman, her manifest design was to give a distinct employment to their various faculties; and they hold that improvement does not consist in making beings so dissimilar do pretty nearly the same things, but in causing each of them to fulfill their respective tasks in the best possible manner. The Americans have applied to the sexes the great principle of political economy which governs the manufacturers of our age, by carefully dividing the duties of man from those of

2 woman in order that the great work of society may be the better carried on.”, (de Tocqueville) De Tocqueville talks about America as if it were the only country where the duties of women and men are clearly divvy out unfairly…as if it were only in America only. Question 5: What do you think the writer thought was the most important information to convey? Why? Because he was influenced by the likes of François Guizot (1787–1874) …who was against the idea of women holding office. It appears to me that Tocqueville revered the set up the Americans adopted from their European counterparts. It also appeared to me that he compared and tried to contrast their differences but I do not see any difference. “In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes and to make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways that are always different.”, (de Tocqueville) The difference is that the Americas were a new frontier and not as developed as Europe so that made this next quote of his odd to me… “American women never manage the outward concerns of the family or conduct a business or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields or to make any of those laborious efforts which demand the exertion of physical strength. No families are so poor as to form an exception to this rule. If, on the one hand, an American woman cannot escape from the quiet circle of domestic employments, she is never forced, on the other, to go beyond it. Hence it is that the women of America, who often exhibit a masculine strength of understanding and a manly energy, generally preserve great delicacy of personal appearance and always retain the manners of women although they sometimes show that they have the hearts and minds of men.”, (de Tocqueville) Question 6: Does the document convey a certain tone? (Are they under pressure? Are they angry? Are they happy?) Not under pressure or angry but full of himself because he thought he was right so perhaps he was happy to report his finding. I do not perceive any difference in American women than the women in Europe during that time. White women were being oppressed but not as much as people of color. I fail to see that he understood equality in the sexes because the Americas were not difference than any other European country during that time. Question 7: What does this document imply without stating directly? (Think of the context of this document in the history we discussed in this unit.) With all that was going on at that time…e.g.; the westward expansion, the Mexican-American war, the annexing of Texas, and so on…things were intense

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