Research Paper on:
Women's Contributions and Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
particular section of his work, Section 3 which is called "Influence of Democracy on Manners Properly so Called," we are given a few chapters which deal with women in the  presumably free government of America. In the following paper we examine Chapter IX, Chapter X, and Chapter XII of Section 3, discussing how Tocqueville understood the contribution that women could  make in the free government of America. Chapter IX This chapter is titled "Education of Young Women in the United States." In the beginning of this chapter he  illustrates how American young women are women who seem far more intelligent and mature than European women. He states, "I have been frequently surprised and almost frightened at the singular  address and happy boldness with which young women in America contrive to manage their thoughts and their language amid all the difficulties of free conversation; a philosopher would have stumbled  at every step along the narrow path which they trod without accident and without effort. It is easy, indeed, to perceive that even amid the independence of early youth an  American woman is always mistress of herself; she indulges in all permitted pleasures without yielding herself up to any of them, and her reason never allows the reins of self-guidance  to drop, though it often seems to hold them loosely." He admires them for these qualities and then discusses how the American people do not solely rely on religion for  education of women but also understand that a woman needs to be intelligent. He finishes the chapter with the following remarks: "I am aware that an education of this kind  is not without danger; I am sensible that it tends to invigorate the judgment at the expense of the imagination and to make cold and virtuous women instead of affectionate