Slavery, Subjection and Culture in Adams’s Democracy and Esther

Abstract

Chapter 1 shows how Henry Adams's novels interrogate John Stuart Mill's arguments for egalitarian reciprocity in marriage and in pedagogical practice. Reading Democracy and Esther alongside Mill's Subjection of Women, with reference to his 'Inaugural Address', the chapter argues that these novels are early expressions of an apostasy from liberalism that finds fuller expression in Adams's later work. Questioning liberalism's account of the human as well as its zeal for development, Democracy and Esther play with Darwinian ideas in order to suggest that men and women are base and bestial, especially in their relations with each other. Relishing such primitive animality along with a sensuous absence of intellect, Adams locates these qualities in womanhood and Blackness; these categories of sex and race help him to articulate a rejection of liberal arguments for education and progress.