Major Themes
Adams also employs themes in the manner of a novelist or even a musical composer. He introduces the theme and then returns to it, embellishing and augmenting as he goes. Important examples in the Education are loss of innocence, confronting exploitation, the Christian unity of the Middle Ages, and the scientific multiplicity of the modern era, each of which contributes to Henry’s education.
Adams’s understanding of “education” has more to do with experience than formal schooling. A step in gaining that experience is the loss of innocence that Henry encounters early in the work. In the opening chapters, readers find a young boy like many others, naïvely enjoying the freedoms of life and rather crossly annoyed by the restrictions. Henry’s early life in Quincy, and for the most part in Boston, is innocent and carefree. His view of the world begins to change during his trip to Washington—and the slave states of Maryland and Virginia—with his father in 1850 (Chapter III). This sudden exposure to evil confuses Henry: “The more he was educated, the less he understood.” Man’s inhumanity to man is appalling, even to this twelve-year-old boy. He wants to flee the nightmare horror of slavery, the “sum of all wickedness.” A political deal struck by some leaders of the Free Soil Party further disillusions Henry. They agree to support a pro-slavery democrat for the office of Governor of Massachusetts in exchange for democratic support of the Free Soil candidate for United States Senate. The narrator points out that this is Henry’s “first lesson in practical politics.” It is not his last. Any remnants of political innocence are stripped away during Henry’s years in London (1861–1868).
As the Civil War worsens for the Union, the diplomatic situation in London is exacerbated (Chapter X). The narrator raises the question whether any politician can be trusted. Examples are Prime Minister Palmerston and the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell. With the South apparently on the brink of chasing President Lincoln from the White House, Palmerston writes Russell (September 14) and suggests diplomatic intervention on the side of the Confederacy. Russell responds even more strongly; he adamantly supports intervention regardless of the military situation. As the Union gains military advantage, Palmerston backs down. Russell, however, calls for a Cabinet meeting in hopes of intervention. He deceivingly tells Minister Adams that the policy of the British government simply is to “adhere to a strict neutrality.” The cabinet votes down Russell’s plan for intervention. All along, Henry has trusted Russell, whom the Minister, Charles Francis Adams, has liked but wisely not completely trusted. Russell has behaved like a practical politician, a lesson in experience for Henry.
Having lost his childhood innocence, Henry is prepared for his part in the struggle to confront exploitation of the weak and disenfranchised. This comes as second nature to him because of his experience with slavery and the family’s position on that issue during the Civil War. He gets an opportunity to act during his early days as a reform journalist. On September 24, 1869, the price of gold crashes spectacularly, exposing a scheme involving financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk as well as President Grant’s brother-in-law, a man named Corbin. Gould and Fisk attempt to corner the market on gold, which would ruin many small investors. The Secretary of the Treasury finally places $4,000,000 worth of government gold on sale, putting an end to the scheme. Gould, however, has somehow learned of the move beforehand and begins to sell just in time. The implication is that Gould had information from inside the Grant cabinet. Although he can never absolutely prove that connection, Henry’s investigation into the scheme establishes his reputation as a reform journalist. In 1893, a different issue concerning gold calls for Henry’s attention. This time, the question is whether international trade should be based exclusively on payment of balances in gold or on a combination of gold and silver. Adams supports the silver backers—primarily small businessmen, laborers, debtors, and farmers—because he is wary of the control of bankers and other gold capitalists, whom Henry calls gold-bugs.
After a visit to Cuba with Clarence King in 1894, Henry becomes devoted to the cause of Cuban independence from Spain, proposing to Congress a peaceful, diplomatic resolution titled “Recognition of Cuban Independence” (December 21, 1896). Because diplomacy fails, Adams welcomes the Spanish-American War of 1898, which results in Cuban independence.
Henry’s interest in the Christian unity of the Middle Ages is part of one of the most important dichotomies in his character. Adams has gained an appreciation for the significance of the Church and its symbols—the Virgin, the mass, the cathedral—in the lives of fourteenth-century Christians. The Church is a unifying force, and Henry admires the comfort and direction that the people share. Near the end of 1900 or the beginning of 1901, he composes a poem titled “Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres.” The poem expresses the theme and recognizes the force of medieval Christianity as expressed in the miracles attributed to the Virgin as well as in belief of the Madonna’s capacity to intervene on behalf of her people through prayer. Having studied Gothic architecture intensely since 1895, Henry also writes his Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, a historical and philosophical meditation on medieval unity, which is published in 1904.
In contrast, the last third of the Education is increasingly concerned with the scientific multiplicity of the modern era. Expositions in Chicago, Paris, and St. Louis attract Henry’s attention to a new direction for mankind. The comfortable unity of the Middle Ages has been replaced by scientific multiplicity. There are no longer any simple answers. People must struggle to maintain control over scientific advance. Henry believes that mankind will need to make a dramatic increase in intellect just to deal with all of the scientific data arriving in the twentieth century. Part of his “Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres” (1900–1901) is a section titled “Prayer to the Dynamo”; in it, mankind has lost its innocence along with its unifying faith and finds itself in a materialistic world, worshipping the dynamo. Technology has replaced the Church. Adams does not necessarily prefer this. In fact, he seems nostalgic for the simple unity of the Middle Ages. But as a historian and an intellect, he must recognize what is happening and try to incorporate scientific thought into his own approach to history. This is the starting point of the closing chapters of the book in which he does develop a “Dynamic Theory of History” (1904). As a companion piece to the Chartres, Adams writes The Education of Henry Adams (1907), a study in multiplicity.
Within the context of an experimental work of literature, Adams makes effective use of symbol and theme. The result is a hybrid of biography, history, fiction, and philosophy, which Modern Library calls the best work of nonfiction in English in the twentieth century.
