Women and Mores

Tocqueville: “There have never been free societies without mores, and as I observed in the first part of this book, it is woman who shapes these mores. Therefore everything which has a bearing on the status of women, their habits, and their thoughts is, in my view, of great political importance.”

Rousseau (in a footnote to the phrase, "when men have sacrificed their taste to the tyrants of their liberty"): "I am very far from thinking that this ascendancy of women is in itself an evil. It is a gift given them by nature for the happiness of the human race. Better directed [by whom?--men?!], it could produce as much good as today it does harm. We do not adequately suspect the advantages that would result for society if a better education were given to that half of the human race which governs the other. Men will always be what is pleasing to woman; therefore if you want them to become great and virtuous, teach women what greatness of soul and virtue are. The reflections occasioned by this subject and made long ago by Plato greatly deserve to be better developed by a writer worthy of following such a master and defending so noble a cause."

When I read this passage from Rousseau some time ago, I thought, "The Straussians would love this." I really wonder if Mansfield isn't doing precisely what Rousseau recommends: providing women with an understanding of what greatness of soul and virtue are in men so that women will want that, and so that men, in turn, will strive to be that. I think Mansfield said, possibly in the introduction to Manliness, that the book was written not for men, but for smart women.