1830 is not all that long after the French Revolution, in which the very French idea of chivalry died a quick death. Prior to the revolution, French men were sometimes murdered for as little as questioning the honor of ladies.

De Tocqueville seems to have had sentimental feelings about chivalry, as a lot of French did in his day. Perhaps he saw how some of the old honor codes remained in America, in the South in particular, and found this favorable in comparison to his much changed homeland.

Women’s security and liberty may be a reasonable goal, but when it is enforced with such ferocity men eventually rebel, and for good reason: they often find themselves subjects of the women being “protected,” and a woman in authority can be a terrible tyrant to men (not to mention her children).

By the way, chivalry – including the female-worshipping part – was partly borrowed from Muslims during the Crusades. Even today Muslims honestly think they honor Muslim women much more than we do our own.