Illustration of a portrait of Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams

by Henry Brooks Adams

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The Education of Henry Adams

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Writing of himself in the third person to increase the sense of objectivity, Adams presents himself as one unable to cope with the multiplicity of the twentieth century. His education, rooted in eighteenth century rational humanism, had told him that the world is orderly. Yet his experiences had proved to him that chaos is the law of nature; order is the dream of man.

To establish this myth of failure, Adams distorts and deletes facts. He dismisses his monumental historical writings and his work for his father in the American embassy in London during the Civil War. He also skips over the twenty most productive years of his life (1872-1892). The style, too, is somber, the frequent passive constructions stressing Adams’ vision of himself as a victim of forces beyond his control.

As a record of Adams’ life, then, the work is not always trustworthy. It does, however, accurately reflect Adams’ disappointments: He had longed for political power that eluded him, his sister had died tragically in 1872, and his wife had committed suicide in 1885.

The book also demonstrates Adams’ lifelong quest for a unifying historical principle--that dream of order--to explain the movement from twelfth century unity (discussed in Adams’ previous book, Mont St.-Michel and Chartres) to twentieth century multiplicity. Near the end of the Education he presents “The Dynamic Theory of History,” arguing that changes occur with increasing rapidity and that the twentieth century is beyond man’s ability to control. In his fear for the future of mankind, he expressed a concern common to his time--and to ours.

Bibliography:

Dusinberre, William. Henry Adams: The Myth of Failure. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980. Argues that Adams’ literary career should not be judged from The Education of Henry Adams alone, and relates the book to Adams’ other historical writings to show that his negative assessment of them is misleading.

Jordy, William H. Henry Adams: Scientific Historian. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952. Evaluates Adams’ claims that he was writing a “scientific” history. Demonstrates the weaknesses of the scientific arguments that Adams advanced.

Levenson, J. C. The Mind and Art of Henry Adams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957. One of the first important studies to consider Adams’ thought in its entirety. Contains an analysis of how The Education of Henry Adams fits in the writing life of its author.

O’Toole, Patricia. The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1990. An engaging narrative about Adams and his closest associates. Provides good insights into the events and emotions that lay behind the writing of The Education of Henry Adams. The most accessible of the books on Adams.

Samuels, Ernest. Henry Adams. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989. The best one-volume biography of Adams, with an excellent discussion of the writing of The Education of Henry Adams that links the book well to the events of Adams’ life.

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