Tocqueville's assertion that the phrase “gentleman” represents nothing less than the progression of egalitarian thought throughout Europe and America is one far less far-fetched than it would appear at first glance. To a modern reader, especially an American one, putting any sort of premium on the word seems somewhat odd, given its almost whimsical nature as a modifier to “men” largely used to add syllables to introductory speeches. However, it's trivial usage belies its true past as a rigidly enforced demarcation of class and status in the Old Regime. Tracing the creation of the gentleman to the creation of a clearly defined class of nobility in feudal Europe, Tocqueville claims in his The Old Regime and the Revolution that “the class since …show more content…
While wealth and familial reputation still remained as powerful class markers, the concept of birthright nobility was slipping from societal memory. A gentleman was now someone who possessed the social graces and cultural background of the old aristocracy, regardless of their status of birth. Unlike the nobles of France, who were increasingly forced to coalesce around the almighty Bourbon monarchy in order to maintain their vaunted status, the political power of Parliament and England’s robust court system allowed English aristocrats a good deal of distance from the comparatively deferential English Crown. “As distinctions of classes became less marked in England,” writes Tocqueville, “ [gentleman's] signification widened. Century after century, it was applied to lower and lower classes in the social scale. The English at last bore it with them to America, where it was indiscriminately applied to all classes.”(108) The United States, being the logical endpoint of England’s inchings towards egalitarianism, managed to render the word completely meaningless. As Tocqueville writes in Democracy in America, Americans think so little of the trappings of nobility that “if [an American] happens by chance to become heated, he will say ‘gentleman’ in addressing his interlocutor.” (232) What was once the highest form of deference to a social superior is now a minor form of flattery, no different than addressing someone as “Mister” to win brownie points with them. As a signifier, “gentleman” has found itself subsumed wholly by
In traditional European society, gentlemen didn?t work, only common people did. ?The liberality for which gentlemen were known connoted freedom ? freedom from material want?and freedom from having ...
Alexis De Tocqueville painted a portrait of a flourishing democracy within the text, Democracy in America. Tocqueville proposed that equality was one of the fundamental tenets that aided the success of American democracy. He defined equality of conditions as the end of aristocracy: “the noble has fallen on the social ladder, and the commoner has risen; the one descends, the other climbs. Each half century brings them nearer, and soon they are going to touch” (Democracy in America, book, 6). American democracy flourishes because there is an established equality of conditions for all; American democracy enforced the absence of formal rank and the end of births into positions of power while encouraging forms of power that challenged rank and privilege. However, in his analysis, Alexis De Tocqueville recognized the presence of race based inequality and cautioned that the reinforcement of a racial hierarchy could be detrimental to American democracy. Such observations characterize Tocqueville as insightful and
The French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution were very significant in the course of human history. They were significant because they changed governments and the human rights in their respective nations. The people in France and Haiti wanted a new government in the form of a democracy. Both revolutions had many similarities and differences. The causes for both revolutions were similar because the poorest citizens of each country drove the need for the revolutions as those in higher power treated them with no dignity.
Goodwin, Lorinda B. R. An Archeology of Manners: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusettes. Boston: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999. [secondary source]
Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation of the American prison system brought out several interesting facts about America and how it governs itself. He talks of the danger of greed for money, the importance of forming associations, and the power of influence in town government. Although many of his observations have since changed, many of them bring about legitimate points about American government and society.
Throughout his essay “How the Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes,” Tocqueville compares the women’s status of European to that of American. For example, to emphasize the roles of American women in ...
Tocqueville (rather bizarrely in retrospect) conceived of America as having “an almost complete equality of conditions”. While in respect to the French alone, Tocqueville argues, “the taste and the idea of freedom began to exist and to be developed only at the time when social conditions were tending to equality and as a consequence of that very equality.” Tocqueville draws the first stirrings of equality to the “political power of the clergy,” which upon being consolidated began to spread and upon its ranks to “all classes, to rich and poor, commoner, and noble.” Thus “through the Church, equality penetrates into the government, and he who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage could, as a priest, take his place in the midst of nobles, and would often sit above kings.” Tocqueville continues to trace the ascent of equality and descent of aristocracy to the financial demise of kings “ruining themselves by their great enterprises; the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, [while] the lower orders enriching themselves by commerce”. And with the advent and spread of education, the “value attached to high birth declines just as fast as new avenues to power are
Tocqueville opens the book with a discussion on the equality of conditions that he experienced in America, and the general trend toward equality that he sees all over the world. The desires of the people and their freedom to pursue them produce a trend in which socioeconomically, the rich lose wealth and the poor gain it, and politically, a poor man has the same ability to influence the government as a rich man. This trend toward equality of conditions leads to the system of government that Tocqueville saw in America, in which the majority holds political and social power based on the notion that, “there is more enlightenment and wisdom in a numerous assembly than in a single ma...
Dersin, Denise et al. What Life was Like In the Age of Chivalry. Virginia: Time Life Inc., 1997. Print.
De Tocqueville’s argument was between equality versus individualism. He describes individualism as “a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends” (De Tocqueville, 506). His perspective was that individualism empowers people to become competent but also strengthens and reassures society to work with the others in the community to magnify the possibilities for humans. As stated by Professor Veugelers “De Tocqueville happened to see that the inequality between the rich and the poor became more restricted, and thought that at some point the gap will close.”
The American and the French revolutions had many similarities and differences. One similarity being is that they both wanted to escape the rule of their King. Second, they both started by an uprising of people against unfair taxation by the monarchy. The French peasants were not represented by the Parliament. It was mainly composed of middle and upper class people. Now, the American colonists were not represented in England because of their lack of presence. Both wanted to set up a Republic, which provided liberty and justice to all classes of citizens. Just like France, the American colonists were composed up mainly middle and lower class citizens. The American Revolution started out by not wanting bloodshed and violence. France started out with violence and bloodshed. (American Revolution)
Charles Dickens, the author of A Tale of Two Cities portrays the aristocracy as an oblivious body of self-entitled people that wholeheartedly believe in their destiny of wealth. Their understanding of the poor people’s fate as stepping stools to their success allow them to injure and even murder them without any repercussions. This constant abuse of the rich to the poor fuels the fire that is the French Revolution. The Marquis St. Evrémonde shows an extreme sense of ignorance when, after running over an innocent child, he simply, “threw out a gold coin” as a token
[7] Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: U of California, 1984. Print.
A gentleman, as defined by Merriam Webster's Collegiate dictionary is a man whose conduct conforms to a high standard of propriety or correct behavior or a man of any social class or condition often used in a courteous reference. A gentleman possesses sincerity, nobility, strength, security and assurance. Each male makes a transition from boyhood to manhood, a time of change from childhood to adulthood. Octavia is the guide for James in his journey to maturation, into being a gentleman. The narrator states, "I look at my mama and I know what she's thinking. I been with Mama so much, just me and her. I know what she's thinking all the time". (p. 384) He realizes early he has a responsibility, the reader realizes this when the narrator states: "I'm the oldest and she say I'm the man".(p 384) Usually the oldest child has the most responsibility because they act as a role model to the younger siblings and if anything should happen to the parents, they must take care of everything.
At the start of the revolution, in 1789, France’s class system changed dramatically (Giddens, 2014). Aristocrats lost wealth and status, while those who were at the bottom of the social ladder, rose in positions. The rise of sociology involved the unorthodox views regarding society and man which were once relevant during the Enlightenment (Nisbet, 2014). Medievalism in France during the eighteenth century was still prevalent in its “legal structures, powerful guilds, in its communes, in the Church, in universities, and in the patriarchal family” (Nisbet, 2014). Philosophers of that time’s had an objective to attempt to eliminate the natural law theory of society (Nisbet, 2014). The preferred outcome was a coherent order in which the mobility of individuals would be unrestricted by the autonomous state (French Revolution). According to Karl Marx, economic status is extremely important for social change. The peasants felt the excess decadence of the ancient regime was at the expense of their basic standards of living, thus fuelling Marx’s idea of class based revolutions and the transition of society (Katz, 2014). This can be observed, for example, in novels such as Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a novel that had a role for mobilizing the attitudes of the