Democratic Political Institutions

For Carey, as for Tocqueville, America's chief feature is its striking equality of conditions, laws, and mores.Footnote ¹⁷ This equality is evident in politics and the economy, but it also penetrates the realms of education and culture. For his part, Carey seems content to pass over most of the institutional aspects of the US system—the focus of much of Tocqueville's first volume. Olivier is ostensibly studying American prisons, like Tocqueville was,Footnote ¹⁸ but most of the discussion of prisons occurs offstage. Nor do we hear much about federalism, political judgments, or the role of the Constitution. We know Olivier is writing about such topics, but they do not figure prominently in the alternating narrative. Although Olivier has an awkward encounter with customs officials and Parrot runs afoul of the law after a street fight, neither encounters the state in any manner approaching their Old World experiences. In Carey's account, American institutions are less pervasive than those in the Old World, enabling some freedom from placement in strict roles and castes. Even the prisons are in the background of American society, not omnipresent as in Europe.Footnote ¹⁹

Carey does address political institutions when he can draw a personal connection to one of his characters. For example, he deftly depicts the effects of the Old Regime and the Revolution on Olivier's family, the Garmonts. Olivier grew up in relative security and splendor on a country estate, insulated from the turmoil of postrevolutionary France. He learned from an early age that to be a Garmont meant to inhabit an elevated, heroic role, advancing the welfare of others while caring little for one's own life. Such a charge was not democratic, of course—those benefited still had to recognize their lower place in the hierarchy—but the aristocratic Garmonts looked out for their subordinates, nonetheless. This understanding of his natural calling is shaken when he learns what happened to his family under the Revolution. The revolutionaries, he is told, not only carried away his grandfather to be executed, but even condemned his grandfather's pigeons to death for stealing grain. Olivier is horrified to imagine sansculottes, in his mind naked from the waist down, striding up to the chateau and demanding that its owners not only receive them but also leave with them. Olivier is confused and angry, not yet appreciating the power of a revolutionary mob (12–16). To him, the revolutionaries are bloodthirsty fools who recklessly overthrew a flawed regime, only to be subjected to a callous bourgeoisie (80–81). Their condition, Olivier argues, is no better under the new regime, which lacks the noblesse oblige that guided the old order.

The “red-clawed creature” of radical democracy continues to haunt Olivier throughout his life (124, 195). Although his criticisms of American life are often advanced in a calm, detached manner, the old fear, anger, and indignation are barely hidden. While attending an American parade, Olivier makes the chilling observation that it is a relief, for once, to “stand safely inside the Revolution,” and “to be on the unquestioned side of good” (348). He knows, all too well, what it means to be the target of a revolution, and through him the reader can feel a bit of that “religious dread” Tocqueville described.

In contrast, Parrot approaches institutions in the spirit of an Old World democrat, offering a perspective not clearly found in Tocqueville's work, but with which the reader can easily sympathize. He tramps from job to job with his father, ekes out a bare living, loves recklessly, and takes on each new challenge in relatively good humor. He may dream of a fairer, more egalitarian world, but he has little expectation of being able to live in such a place. When the Marquis de Tilbot tells him that houses in America cost as little as cows, Parrot scoffs (89). He accepts the basic idea that America is a land of possibility, but he cannot quite see himself as a part of it. In his experience, political and social institutions tend to be at odds with his interests and dreams, working to keep him low down in a hierarchy that benefits the few over the many. Where political institutions touch him personally, as when the local lord condemns to death Parrot's fellow printers—including his father—he cannot help but question the institutions’ legitimacy (64–68, 173–74).

Parrot's cynicism is also evident while he is in service to Olivier. Parrot sees Olivier's limitations clearly, and he has a knack for generating irreverent nicknames for his master, such as Lord Migraine and Lord Snobsduck. In his opinion, Olivier has been coddled from birth, blessed with enormous undeserved privileges and heartless toward any inferior. Olivier casually insults Parrot in the letters he sends back home (105), routinely lashes out in anger against Parrot (323–26), and even attempts to seduce Mathilde, Parrot's lover (126). Parrot is sick of him long before they reach America.

The American institutions that Parrot and Olivier encounter tend to be of local origin, such as the Connecticut town meetings both men attend. Here Carey has an advantage over Tocqueville, in that he can render discussions and personalities in full detail, bringing to bear his characters’ past experiences with hierarchical and egalitarian institutions. For example, Olivier—ever fearful of mob rule—is brought to tears witnessing ordinary people governing themselves peacefully and prudently (258). Measures are raised, debated, and resolved without appealing to authority or resorting to the torch and pitchfork. Although Olivier shrewdly asks about the connections between democracy and the Salem witch trials (262), he is generally impressed by this example of self-rule and praises town government as Tocqueville does. (Tocqueville's claim that local institutions help suppress “the despotic tendencies which have been driven into the interior of the body social” seems particularly close to Olivier's view.)Footnote ²⁰

It is Parrot's experience, however, that best illustrates the potential of democratic government. Up to this point in the novel, Carey has cleverly obscured Parrot's age, fooling readers into thinking that Parrot is much younger than he actually is. Parrot is actually about twice as old as Olivier, and even raised a family of his own in Australia before returning to Europe and proceeding to America (36, 218, 221–22, 225–26). However, we have seen Parrot mostly through Olivier's disdainful eyes (making us think of Parrot as small and subordinate) and through Parrot's own storytelling (in which he denigrates himself and tends to give in to his superiors). Unless one pays attention to various hints throughout the text, one might discount half or more of Parrot's age and experience. The reader, like both Olivier and Parrot, is led into making a radically incorrect judgment about Parrot.

A healthy democracy, Carey implies, depends on citizens displaying a stout self-confidence. So long as Parrot views himself as small and inconsequential, he will be at the mercy of those who are higher placed, whether that be Olivier or some other powerful person. Olivier never suffers from this ailment, of course, having plenty of confidence in his ability and right to rule. Parrot, however, must be coaxed and even compelled to take a stand for himself. Such reluctance is a perennial challenge for democracy, a regime that formally empowers everyone, but informally gives greater power to those with confidence, rhetorical skill, money, and so on. If the people are too dismissive of their own capabilities, as Parrot is, there will be no effective check on elites or way to limit inequality. As Carey demonstrates in the town meetings, though, under the right circumstances democratic institutions can call forth the individual pride necessary for republican government.

Parrot's initial impression of town government is that it is dreadfully boring and cumbersome (257). He despairs of listening to community members speak at length about trivial matters. To him all settled institutions are alike, inevitably tending toward the oppression of ordinary people: “Democracies and monarchies, it does not matter—the world is filled with poor men tortured by the state. The rich make an endless supply of them” (225). To someone with such a jaded view, the fact that the townships are run democratically is not necessarily an argument in their favor.

However, a crucial moment in Parrot's transformation occurs when he is charged with counterfeiting and must face hostile townsfolk in a public forum without a noble protector. For the first time, he enters the role of democratic citizen, not just egalitarian grumbler. He rises and defends himself in the town meeting, not only clearing his name, but also demonstrating how his accuser is, by comparison, an unskilled craftsman. By standing up for himself amid the democratic procedures of the town meeting, Parrot shows that he is capable of self-rule and self-determination, having no further need of Olivier or any other patron. (For his part, Olivier is appalled that no one brought the matter up with him, as Parrot's master. This perceived faux pas dampens his enthusiasm for local institutions.)

Democracy, in other words, while always having a tendency toward the mob rule of the Paris streets, can yet be run in such a way that people of good will can govern themselves prudently and productively. Here Carey builds on Tocqueville's argument that “local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science”; citizens can learn the habits of productive self-rule through the practice of local government, helping prevent both the tyranny of the majority and the rule by an elite over a mass of timid subjects.Footnote ²¹ Dana Villa notes that, in Tocqueville's analysis, town governments served as permanent associations that “stepped into the breach” left by the absence of Old World intermediary powers, “occupying a critical part of the terrain between individual and government.”Footnote ²² Carey helps bring this insight to life, illustrating how democratic political institutions work in particular situations to elevate, embolden, and train citizens.

Two further points are worth mentioning with regard to Parrot's experience in the town meeting. First, this is an important example of laws helping to create democratic mores. In Democracy in America, much of the emphasis is on how democratic conditions and mores give rise to democratic institutions (as when the notion of popular sovereignty erodes restrictive voting qualifications),Footnote ²³ as well as on how certain American institutions constrain the ill effects of democracy (for example, by enshrining individual rights in law, in order to protect against majority tyranny).Footnote ²⁴ Tocqueville gives relatively little attention to how democratic laws can actually foster egalitarian habits,Footnote ²⁵ including the kind of confidence that makes people believe that their interests and opinions matter in public deliberations. Religious belief and civil associations can, as Tocqueville argues, prompt citizens to see a larger good than their own interests.Footnote ²⁶ However, Parrot's problem is not that he cannot see beyond himself, but rather that he undervalues himself and his own interests. He has had little experience shaping his own destiny, and thus finds it difficult to conceive of a world where he might be taken seriously. In the novel, the institutions of local government work to shape Parrot's “habits of the heart,”Footnote ²⁷ making him self-confident and entrepreneurial where before he was uncertain and timid. If, like Tocqueville, we are concerned about the future prospects of democracy,Footnote ²⁸ Carey's account of the need for cultivating proper pride is worthy of our consideration.

Second, Carey suggests that the influence of institutions on mores can be rapid. According to Robert Gannett Jr., Tocqueville saw New England towns as working “over time, encompassing generations” in “the steady building—both individually and collectively—of civic habits or character.”Footnote ²⁹ Indeed, Tocqueville describes New Englanders’ “political education” as having been “completed long ago,” given the “primordial” nature of popular sovereignty in the region.Footnote ³⁰ The mores of New England were built over many decades, forming a solid foundation for democratic institutions. Yet, as Carey describes in Parrot's case, institutions can also bring about changes in attitudes that are sudden, almost as in an epiphany. Perhaps Parrot's rapid transformation serves the novel's plot better than a slow change would, but Carey—being able to look closely at particulars, not just general trends—challenges us to think about the speed at which culture can be brought in line with institutions. Recent decades, after all, have seen immense changes in attitudes regarding civil rights, the workplace, and the family—encouraged, if not always initiated, by landmark legislation and court decisions. By emphasizing both the power of democratic institutions over habits and the speed at which the changes in habits can occur, Carey shifts the weight in Tocqueville's argument in a manner helpful for understanding modern society.

Democracy and Education

In the first volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville notes that there are few highly educated Americans, but many modestly educated ones.Footnote ³¹ In the second volume, he expands his preliminary thoughts regarding the consequences of equality, emphasizing the transformation of paternal authority, the self-reliant freedom learned by girls, the development of gender equality, the self-doubt individuals experience when confronting a majority, and the role of money in conditioning most relationships.Footnote ³² In Parrot and Olivier, Carey rests his narrative on these insights, but uses the tools of the novelist to demonstrate the effects of democratic education on particular individuals. In addition, Carey compares the varieties of American education with Olivier's aristocratic upbringing and Parrot's Old World democratic education. As Carey sets up these comparisons, it becomes clear how American democracy can either veer towards cultural philistinism or develop a healthy republicanism, depending on which values predominate in early education and socialization.

Aristocratic privilege can be accompanied by prim inactivity—as in the case of Olivier's motherFootnote ³³ —but it can also enable an intense experience of life, as Olivier's childhood experiences illustrate. As a boy, Olivier was always at the center of attention. This was both a result of his family's rank and wealth and an important element of his aristocratic training. He had to learn to fill his role, commanding the respect of his inferiors through confident projection, not brute force. He had to both feel and demonstrate that he was entitled to his position. To that end, his parents assigned him a private tutor, Bébé, who took Olivier fishing, hunting, camping, and swimming. The education of a young male aristocrat, Carey reminds us, is not solely about etiquette—or, as Olivier dryly puts it, hiding one's feelings (352). Nor is it limited to academic study, though Olivier was something of a prodigy in music and classical languages (17). Olivier and Bébé engaged in a life of strenuous exertion and active learning, and Olivier acquired a thorough knowledge of the area's flora and fauna. Although prone to nervous breakdowns, Olivier was not as helpless as democratic readers might expect. His athleticism later surprises Parrot (269), for example, and at several points he shows remarkable initiative.

Parrot's education, in contrast, was one of Dickensian hard knocks. He spent his youth in England on the road with his father, a journeyman printer. Both were intellectually curious; Parrot emphasizes that the “acquisition of knowledge was our occupation” (37). He received little formal schooling, but along the way he picked up basic skills and even some Latin. By the age of twelve, he was conversant in Rousseau's political thought, and he would soon add Adam Smith to his repertoire. The printers with whom he lived and worked were some of the best-read individuals in the country, having set type on all sorts of newspapers, broadsides, and books. They were disputatious as well, so Parrot received an early education in the back-and-forth of radical political debate. This energetic exchange of ideas, however, had no actual political consequences. The printers could read about and endlessly discuss democratic ideals, but their state in life never changed. Unlike the revolutionaries on the other side of the Channel, these English radicals lacked the opportunity to enact widespread political change. Political debate could only be a hobby for them, a small distraction from the cares of life. They could imagine a better world, but they could see no way of getting there.Footnote ³⁴

In a hierarchical society, individuals of pluck and determination often learn to evade rules set by others. Since they view the law as an opponent, rather than their own creation, violating the law in small ways is considered excusable. When their desires and interests are at odds with the law, they may break it as they see fit, so long as they are not caught. In Carey's tale, Parrot and his father frequently use other people's property for their own purposes, and they both join a print shop where English and French currency is being counterfeited. They and their fellow printers have few qualms about such activity, even as they spout radical political ideas and talk about the universal rights of man. Their transgressions and their principles do not meet in their minds; they see no need to reconcile them with each other.

One might expect America to be a place where the cheerful strenuousness of Olivier's upbringing and Parrot's Old World version of democracy might be blended, perhaps through public provision of education to all students. This mixture indeed occurs in Parrot and Olivier, principally in the character of Amelia Godefroy, Olivier's love interest. Amelia is well educated in the traditional sense (she even speaks French fluently), but she has an American spirit of adventure and daring. That Amelia is meant to symbolize America, or at least part of America's potential, is suggested by how Olivier blends the two names in his mind (326).

Amelia has been raised as a democratic girl, confident in her beliefs and abilities. She seems to match, in fact, Tocqueville's description of American girls at their best.Footnote ³⁵ It seems perfectly reasonable to her that she and Olivier could marry and take up residence wherever they please, either in America or in France. Nothing ought to stand in their way. Amelia—America—has been brought up to think of herself as unstoppable, merely because she has never learned to think otherwise. Why should any well-mannered, well-spoken individual be refused admittance to European society? (Note that this form of confidence is remarkably different from Olivier's belief that he ought to be the center of attention, from the self-assurance the young Parrot and his father felt as they wandered through the English countryside, and from the printers’ revolutionary ideals.) Olivier is almost won over to Amelia's view, but he hesitates about bringing her home to his mother. As if in a scene from Henry James's The American, Amelia's American confidence crashes into Old World snobbishness.Footnote ³⁶ Olivier struggles to explain why birth ought to trump merit, but it all seems absurd to her. The result is misery for Olivier; one suspects that Amelia will have plenty of other suitors.

Amelia might represent the best America has to offer, but Carey—like Tocqueville—is careful not to take too rosy a view of American education. Aside from Amelia, everyone Olivier and Parrot encounter has an angular personality. For example, Mr. Peek has many of Amelia's advantages, including wealth and social status. While Amelia is endearing, though, Parrot and Olivier sense that there is something “off” about Peek. He annoys Olivier by treating him as an equal, presuming that his wealth—as a farmer turned banker—is enough to compensate for his lack of pedigree. He advises Olivier on how to conform to democratic expectations concerning masters and servants, in a passage closely tied to Tocqueville's description of that relationship: “In democracies servant and master are very close; their bodies constantly touch, but their souls remain apart; they have occupations together, but they hardly ever have common interests.”Footnote ³⁷ Peek offers his suggestions with as much confidence as if he were Olivier's father or a close friend (113–14). This familiarity across class lines resembles Amelia's confidence regarding her ability to thrive in France, but Amelia's self-confidence is better placed.

Peek is suspicious of the leveling impulse in democracy. He knows he must doff his cap to anyone on the street and make pleasant conversation, despite being a rich man (114–16). This irks him, for although he is politically equal to others, he is confident that he is otherwise superior to them. He chafes at playing the democrat, which, as Tocqueville points out, is the price of being wealthy in a democracy. As one builds a fortune and does great things, one is tolerated, even celebrated, but one can never gain the status of an aristocrat. Peek will only ever be rich and arrogant, a combination the democratic masses will despise.Footnote ³⁸

Peek's vainglory is one problem. His grasping nature is another. Neither Olivier nor Parrot object to Peek being a self-made man, per se. However, Peek's standards of success are exclusively defined in monetary terms, as he searches continually for bargains, buying low and selling high. His excessive love of the “almighty dollar”Footnote ³⁹ cancels out any improvement in status Peek hoped to gain by his wealth. Although he possesses many of the trappings of the cultured upper class—he even has a Latin motto on his business cards—Peek does not exhibit the healthy imitative spirit of the European bourgeoisie. As Olivier puts it,

This proud cultural narrowness has passed to the next generation, too, for Peek's daughters are very much like their father, being easily flattered and susceptible to the “lust of ownership.” They are not boasters like their father, but they share his moralizing utilitarianism, which seems to thrive in American democratic culture. Olivier remarks upon their “lack in gaiety,” their rigid posture, and how “when they dance one feels the ghosts of Puritans abroad” (134).

One wishes, in fact, that Carey had devoted a little more space in the novel to the Peek daughters. Unlike Amelia, who fits Tocqueville's account of the self-determining young woman who gains great “confidence in her own powers” as a result of equal liberty,Footnote ⁴⁰ the Peek girls face restrictions arising from their religion and their father's profession. Tocqueville argues that American girls experience relatively few constraints compared to American wives, but the following passage seems to apply to the Peek daughters as well as to their mother: “The Americans are both a Puritan and a trading nation. Therefore both their religious beliefs and their industrial habits lead them to demand much abnegation on the woman's part and a continual sacrifice of pleasure for the sake of business.”Footnote ⁴¹ If Tocqueville is correct that American girls, having enjoyed liberty, embrace the restrictions of marriage in a fully voluntary manner,Footnote ⁴² what becomes of those American girls, including Peek's daughters, who never knew much liberty in their youth? This would be an interesting question for Carey to explore.

A middle case between the laudable Amelia and the wealth-obsessed Mr. Peek is Mr. Duponceau, a Frenchman who has lived long enough in America, according to Olivier, to have been “deracinated” (207). However, he can still speak Olivier's language, appreciates good wine, and has an enviable library. He is the best company Olivier has enjoyed in the New World, aside from Amelia. Having noticed how American libraries and book stores are filled with instructional manuals rather than good literature (238), Parrot also appreciates Duponceau's level of culture. Duponceau does bear certain marks of the New World, though. He is a self-made man, having begun as a poor draper's son in France. The ladder in his library used to belong to a house painter—signaling the artificiality of his current status—and he carelessly shakes his bottles of wine (207–16). The roughness of his upbringing remains apparent, and he will likely never achieve Amelia's effortless grace. However, unlike Mr. Peek, he rises to the level of a worthy bourgeois, having strived mightily to improve himself culturally.

Much depends, of course, on which kind of development will become prominent in American life. If enough Amelias and Duponceaus are crafted, then philistines such as Mr. Peek, who believe everything has its price, might be held in check. This may seem like a modest goal, but as Jan Blits reminds us, “Tocqueville's democratic education is not a repudiation of bourgeois life, but, rather, a tempering or attenuating of it.”Footnote ⁴³ Carey seems fairly content with this result, too. However, the future of American democracy will be bleaker if Amelia and Duponceau prove to be anomalies, rather than common types.

Olivier and Parrot represent two varieties of this concern, stemming on the one hand from the old aristocratic aversion to new wealth and, on the other, from the old democratic suspicion of those who put on airs. Both challenge capitalist excess, but in different ways. The first is an argument on behalf of refinement and culture, while the second is an argument against undeserved inequality. In a young democracy, both perspectives can serve as salutary checks on Peek-like grasping. However, Carey leaves us wondering, at the end of the novel, whether both are still operational in the United States. Do standards of cultural refinement and noble service still constrain capitalism, or have market forces decimated the ability of older elites to define proper behavior for those achieving wealth and status? At the same time, what are we to make of modern egalitarian critiques of capitalism? Do these aim only to limit the worst tendencies of capitalism, or do they seek something more radical, such as the destruction of the capitalist order?

Carey provides few hints here, but it is striking that the one sentence from Democracy in America that he chooses to use as an epigraph is the following: “Can it be believed that the democracy which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?”Footnote ⁴⁴ Perhaps, for Carey, the modern challenge of democracy is no longer about the free market destroying aristocratic norms of restraint and public service—that battle has largely been decidedFootnote ⁴⁵ —but rather about egalitarianism overcoming capitalism, a system that celebrates liberty and tolerates inequality. Were this to happen, one could no longer judge the relative virtues and vices of Peek, Duponceau, and Amelia. As members of the middle and upper classes, they might all be at odds with strictly egalitarian democracy.

The tension among the values of equality, liberty, and cultural development seems to be crucial to the creation of Duponceau and Amelia. Were this productive tension to be resolved in favor of equality alone, first by the destruction of aristocratic authority and then by the destruction of capitalism, could America still generate the sorts of citizens necessary for a flourishing political culture? Carey does not make this argument explicitly, but he subtly directs his readers to consider the problem.

Democracy and Art

In the second volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville argues that democracy, if it ensures some individual freedom, can give rise to considerable achievements in art and literature. In such a free democracy, where liberty and equality coexist, meritorious individuals are allowed to rise above the crowd. If the masses are also elevated through “equal enlightenment,” then some degree of culture could develop.Footnote ⁴⁶ There are limits to this cultural improvement, though. Democratic peoples, Tocqueville argues, tend to “put use before beauty, and… want beauty itself to be useful.” Artists and artisans will feel pressure to “make shoddy things very quickly” for egalitarian consumers. The turn toward realism in art also reflects democratic preferences. For example, earlier painters such as Raphael could “loo[k] for mighty subjects over their heads and far away in time so that imagination could have ample play.” Artists in a democracy, Tocqueville argues, instead strive for “the exact delineation of everyday life whose details are always before their eyes; they copy trivial objects from every angle, though nature provides only too many originals.”Footnote ⁴⁷ In a democracy poetry changes its nature, as well. Under aristocracy, poets can write about the “intermediate powers between God and man,” which are “not palpable to sense, but discovered by the mind.” Under democracy, such intermediate powers, whether religious or political, face erosion. Poetry has fewer suitable subjects, then, surviving instead by engaging “man himself, not tied to time or place, but face to face with nature and with God.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Democratic poetry, like all democratic art, must aspire to this new form of universal grandeur if it is to remain thought-provoking.

Carey does his most daring improvisation on the theme of democratic art, building on Tocqueville's account but going well beyond it in a plot line that involves Mathilde, Mr. Watkins, Parrot, and Olivier. Each of these characters represents part of the complicated relationship between democracy and art in America, together illustrating the many opportunities and limitations democracy creates for those with creative ability.

Mathilde's character enables Carey to depict how democracy can prompt the commercialization of culture. Among France's elite, Mathilde enjoyed a modest reputation as a painter, but her European compatriots conclude that she has more than enough ability to make it in the New World. As the Marquis de Tilbot puts it, “they will think she is a genius,” for “in America there is no one who can paint a horse” (90). However, to survive in America she must learn to sell her wares, and even at times to play the huckster. Without the luxury of an aristocratic patron, who might allow her considerable liberty to paint as she wished, she must now create art that pleases the multitude. Indeed, while crossing the ocean Mathilde deftly takes advantage of the American passengers, selling romanticized portraits at inflated prices. Such works, as well as others she paints after arriving in America, do not show off her real talent, though they fill her pocketbook. Parrot, who has a deep appreciation for Mathilde's ability, is appalled by how she has had to compromise for the sake of a small profit.

A second aspect of democracy's relationship to art is illuminated in the character of Mr. Watkins, an Englishman who has always dreamed of creating color etchings of the birds of the New World. For much of his life, he was compelled to use his considerable skill for a much lower pursuit, counterfeiting currency. He successfully reaches America, however, and soon begins to realize his dream. Watkins and his wife live with Mathilde, producing works of fine quality. For him, America is a land of artistic opportunity—in fact, not merely in promise. Despite never having a patron or the opportunity to display his skills beyond etching printing plates, Watkins flourishes amid the egalitarian freedom of the New World. American democracy liberates him, rather than—as in the case of Mathilde's portraits—forcing him to sacrifice his authenticity. He can take on grand themes with superb skill.

Yet even Watkins struggles to produce art for its own sake. Although it is true that America presents great opportunities for artistic expression (see 280–81), some compromises with egalitarian society are necessary. Both Mathilde and Watkins owe part of their success to a lucrative insurance fraud against Mr. Peek, and they both make ends meet by selling their work at low prices to not very discerning customers (308). Parrot is shocked by these moral and artistic compromises, causing him to wonder whether there is any place for culture in a democracy (313–15). As someone with an eye for great art and an appreciation of the power of forgery, he worries that America will continue to be devoid of culture, except for when the people can be tricked into paying for it.

Parrot himself provides still another example of how democracy and art interact. After flailing about in the New World, Parrot finally establishes his own effective venture, arranging to sell Watkins's best engravings to members of European high society (341–45). Although in a sense Parrot is “selling out”—helping to produce art specifically for the market—he insists upon the highest quality of engraving. He has, in other words, found a way to take advantage of democratic liberty (Watkins is free to pursue his artistic dreams), the free market (the etchings go for large sums), and aristocratic good sense (discerning Europeans are the customers) all at once. Because he has figured out how to blend the best of the Old and New Worlds, Parrot is now much more at home in America. Yet, as with his discussion of democratic education, Carey checks the reader's enthusiasm. Perhaps Parrot's success—and, for that matter, Watkins's—is an anomaly, an exception to the rule that democracy forces creative minds to play to the masses. It also depends upon the good taste of European nobles, who are facing their own decline. Could Parrot's clever arrangement survive the democratization of Europe? Carey lets these and other questions linger in the reader's mind (see 377–80).

More must now be said about Mathilde, who, though busy with producing portraits for sale, also begins to develop a dark and experimental line of work. We never get a clear sense of what her avant-garde pieces look like, but they are both abstract and critical of society. One of them shows a “monstrous little man with his pale eyes peering from the devastation of a war.” At its bottom is a mathematical equation—an equation Mr. Peek had earlier discussed in describing the housing market in New York City. This may be Mathilde's way of criticizing Peek and his kind, who buy and sell without concern for the wider consequences, even to the point of war and destruction. Parrot finds the work horrifying, and he knows Mathilde could never sell it. Perhaps the canvas “would remain in some secret hole a century and thence… be taken out and burned” (276). He admits, though, that there is genius in her nightmarish vision. It is bracing, critical art, the kind that challenges assumptions and threatens to upend established society.

If Parrot finds Mathilde's unconventional work “frightening” (290), Olivier—representing yet another perspective on democracy and art—is even harsher in his judgment. “Dear chap,” he says to Parrot, “no one else will tell you, so forgive me. The paintings are awful. … You are in love. The paintings are awful.” Parrot attempts to defend Mathilde, but Olivier is insistent that Mathilde's experimental works are a symptom of the tyranny of the majority. Channeling Tocqueville, Olivier argues that

There seems to be an important contradiction here. Parrot considers Mathilde's work to be of significant quality, but not marketable to the masses. Olivier suggests that the masses give rise to her art. These two positions are not easily reconciled. Carey does not let this debate develop—it occurs near the end of the book—so it is not clear whether the two views are truly incompatible. Olivier seems to imply that mass society delights in being confronted with greater and greater outrages. Reality television shows, among other examples of popular culture, seem to bear this out. The question here, however, is whether experimental art also arises from this urge.Footnote ⁴⁹ One suspects that Parrot would disagree, given his recognition of Mathilde's inner genius—which political regimes did not create and cannot do much to shape—but Carey purposefully does not give us enough ground for a firm resolution.

Like Tocqueville, Carey recognizes that the relationship between democracy and art is a complicated one. Carey's contribution, however, is to provide particular stories and characters that illustrate that complexity. Democracy's effects are different with respect to Mathilde's various kinds of painting, Watkins's engraving, and Parrot's entrepreneurial efforts, and it cannot be said that those effects are entirely laudable or regrettable. Democracy appears to push for the production of art for the masses, which seems like a sacrifice of true artistic vision until one considers the positive effects of even mediocre art on a culture-starved people.Footnote ⁵⁰ Democracy insists upon conformity at some moments, but grants extensive liberty at others. Mathilde paints according to her customers’ expectations at times, but at other times she paints for herself. There is no class of discerning patron-critics who can give tone to the culture, but there are many people willing to appreciate art, if given the chance.

Are the cultural tradeoffs of democracy worth it? Parrot, in part because of his success in the art world, thinks quite positively about the cultural potential of democracy. Olivier's pessimism continues to resonate, however. This might frustrate those seeking a clear resolution to the question, but such a firm conclusion would be contrary, at some level, to Carey's own artistic venture. He would be giving us a simplistic answer, rather than showing us the complex set of factors that encourage and discourage cultural development. When brought together with Tocqueville's own subtle analysis of democratic art and culture, which also clearly recognizes what is gained and lost in the transition to equality, Carey's work becomes even more intriguing.

Conclusion: Carey as a Friendly Critic of Democracy

Like Tocqueville, Carey seeks to prompt reflection on the beneficial and dangerous tendencies of democracy. However, as a sort of modern-day Tocqueville, he must use a more democratic medium—a novel filled with wit and a dose of coarse humor—to get people to buy and then read his book. In this respect, Carey is living the same challenge his characters face. He must find a way to make art sell, for the days of aristocratic patronage are past. To his credit, Carey avoids sensationalism and cheap anti-Americanism in his book. He retains Tocqueville's judiciousness, even as he writes for a people farther along the path of democracy than Tocqueville's audience was. To pose as a friendly critic of democracy today is more difficult, since democracy has triumphed throughout the West, in principle if not always in actuality.Footnote ⁵¹ There is no other regime one can in good conscience advocate over democracy and still sell books. What Carey seems to do, given the challenge of overtly criticizing American democracy, is to have his two narrators compete for the last word, leaving his own views obscured in the tangle.

Olivier, having lost Amelia and finding himself adrift in the new age, unleashes his harshest judgments in the final chapter. He tells Parrot that although democracy is a “truly lovely flower, a tiny tender fruit… it will not ripen well.” There will be no class to elevate tastes, the majority will assert itself in all aspects of life, and things will only get worse over time. Americans will choose leaders as ill educated as they themselves are, beginning with Andrew Jackson. With his voice rising, Olivier declares,

Olivier is deadly earnest here, making claims similar to Tocqueville's fears about unrestrained democracy.Footnote ⁵² When Parrot shrugs him off, Olivier stops him: “Do not laugh, sir. Listen. I have traveled widely. I have seen this country in its infancy. I tell you what it will become. The public squares will be occupied by an uneducated class who will not be able to quote a line of Shakespeare” (380).

Were the book to end here, one might justifiably conclude that Carey sides with Tocqueville at his most pessimistic, seeing in modern America a poorly ripened fruit. Yet Carey gives Parrot the last word in the novel. As we learn from the “Dedication” found at the very end of the text, written by Parrot, the book is a compilation of Olivier's and Parrot's thoughts, brought together, edited, and printed by Parrot. In these final paragraphs, Parrot undermines Olivier one last time. In response to Olivier's dour predictions, Parrot writes,

Parrot himself serves as evidence that democracy in America can indeed turn out well. It may always include a mixture of the more laudable democratic types (Parrot, Mathilde, Amelia) and the more distasteful (Mr. Peek), but it can restrain itself from the excesses of democracy found in revolutionary France. For Parrot, democracy in America can and will ripen well; Olivier's pessimism, though fueled by nightmares of “the awful guillotine” (380), is unwarranted. Had Olivier more courage in his relationship with America, as with Amelia, he could come to see the New World's potential, despite its faults.

Parrot's voice seems to be the one we ought to take more seriously, since it comes last and because Parrot is the dominant of the two narrators. At least one reviewer concluded this,Footnote ⁵³ and Carey himself expressed affection for Parrot's character, claiming that it was easier to get inside Parrot's mind and world as an author than to imagine Olivier.Footnote ⁵⁴

However, the cryptic epigram at the front of the book—”It is not good to announce every truth”—ought to make us uncertain once again of Carey's true views. Not only does he use this line from Tocqueville's correspondence in the frontispiece, but he has Olivier say much the same thing after witnessing the excesses of the Independence Day celebration: “It is not always wise to tell the truth, but now I will tell it” (350). Perhaps Carey is following the lead of Mark Twain here, who used the prefaces for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to direct the attention of casual readers away from the deeper arguments of the book, while signaling to more careful readers that there were indeed such arguments present.Footnote ⁵⁵ If this is the case with Carey, then instead of resting content with Parrot's cheerful words at the end of the novel, we ought to consider whether Olivier's criticisms, though seemingly rebutted at the end of the work, should still be taken seriously.

One also wonders if Carey's apparent method of criticizing democracy—advance the arguments in someone else's voice, appear to refute them, and then leave a clue that the refutation might only be partial—is one of the only avenues left for a friendly but earnest critic of democracy. Tocqueville may have found himself under certain constraints in criticizing democracy,Footnote ⁵⁶ but Carey has less room to maneuver. Could a modern-day Tocqueville really “tell it as it is,” or would he or she even get a hearing without using certain masking arts, such as those available to a novelist?

For example, when Bernard-Henri Lévy attempted to play Tocqueville in 2005, traveling about in a chauffeured car and expounding upon the laudable and regrettable tendencies of American democracy in American Vertigo, he met with considerable American resistance.Footnote ⁵⁷ Reviewers tended to call attention to his vast wealth, his elitist political biases, his ranking on Vanity Fair’s best-dressed list, his snobbishness, and his libertinism; commentary about these aristocratic traits tended to crowd out serious analysis of his ideas.Footnote ⁵⁸ Garrison Keillor (of Lake Wobegon fame) dismissed the book as “the classic Freaks, Fatties, Fanatics & Faux Culture Excursion beloved of European journalists,” and responded to Lévy's handwringing about the future of the American model with the following:

Parrot could not have said it any better, and in his day certainly would not have had Keillor's platform (the New York Times) from which to say it. American Vertigo might have been a poorly conceived book, and arguably not very Tocquevillian,Footnote ⁶⁰ but one wonders if even a truly insightful book, à la Tocqueville's, could please American critics today. Since Parrot seems to have won the long game against Olivier, any new attempt to describe American democracy must be careful not to offend democratic sympathies too directly; by being more artful at getting his criticisms across, Carey is more successful in prompting a broad spectrum of readers to reflect thoughtfully upon their regime.

Perhaps in the end, though, Carey's book simply confirms Plato's insight that democracy is the regime in which all other regimes may be found. Olivier's aristocratic criticism can still survive, but it must share space with Peek's love of money, Mathilde's art, Jacksonian politics, and Parrot's desire to be a servant no longer—all without a final resolution as to which set of values is best. In this respect Parrot and Olivier, a splendid and vibrant book, does justice to that “many-colored” regime.Footnote ⁶¹