The Heroines of Henry Adams

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BEFORE it was popular think and say so, Henry Adams evolved theory of feminine superiority. Compared the American woman, Adams once said, the American man was chump who wanted be ruled by her; a peaceful, domestic animal, fond of baby-talk and who yearned for love and doughnuts. Snob that he was, it would have been small Adams, who died in 1918, have known that he anticipated the conclusions of feature writers in magazines of predominantly feminine readership circa 1956. Nevertheless, long before F. Ashley Montagu began filling clubwomen's minds with ideas about their superiority, Henry Adams liked startle his guests by asking which of them believed that he was the equal of, or superior to, his wife. What impressed Adams most about women was their strength. The idea that woman was weak revolted all history, Adams said in the Education. It was paleontological falsehood that even an Eocene female monkey would have laughed at. As early as 1876, Adams asserted that woman's role as center of the family gave her degree of prestige and power in primitive cultures which civilization tended diminish. In the next two decades, Adams was convinced further of this view because of his studies of the Oriental Kwannon deity and of the historic role of the Tahitian queens. When Adams visited Chartres in 1896, he began to feel the Virgin or Venus as force; not taste, nor art, nor beauty, but force. Goddesses, he later avowed, needed neither art nor beauty rule. Every one, even among the Puritans, knew that neither Diana of the Ephesians nor any of the Oriental goddesses were worshipped for her beauty. Woman's sheltering strength allegedly afforded solace and comfort Adams-a refuge from the harsh man's world of politics and business for which he had no liking. Adams himself said so, and so has practically everyone who has written about him. However, after study of Adams' heroines -fictional ones like Madeline Lee, Esther and the Virgin; as well as the