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The Hidden Labors of Mary Mottley, Madame de Tocqueville

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ross Carroll
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Abstract

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville described the ideal wife of a democratic citizen as a capable domestic helpmeet who enables the citizen‐husband to endure the daily trials of political activity. Tocqueville's biographers have presented Tocqueville's own wife Mary Mottley as having approximated this ideal. Mottley's importance, it is claimed, lay in providing the domestic calm and psychological support that Tocqueville needed to think, act, and write as he did. My aim in this article is to challenge this interpretation by offering an overdue reassessment of Mottley's life and work, uncovering the hidden labors she performed in Tocqueville's circle and giving scope, where possible, to her own political views and activities. Mottley, I argue, refused to confine herself to the domestic‐management and emotional‐support roles typical of a Tocquevillian citizen‐wife. Instead, she carved out a role for herself (albeit limited) as Tocqueville's political and intellectual interlocutor.

Type
Cluster on Gender and the “Great Man”: Recovering Philosophy's “Wives of the Canon”
Information
Hypatia , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Fall 2018 , pp. 643 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Hypatia, Inc.

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