Esther & Stencil

[Mark Kohut]

Here is one simple perspective, from the time of my lifetime, on Adams 
and women.....and its potential relevance for V. and P's vision through his 
works.

Adams idealized women, ala all the below. He idealized them by raising to an 
intellectual
level the societal stereotype that they were 'feeling', sensibility", not mind, 
rationality......
that they were not fit for business or politics since they were not emotionally 
hard enough...
they were soft...warmth, compassion, etc.....The Virgin Mary, etc....

Men, who were emotionally hard and brainy.................were ruining/had 
ruined the world..........

So, women qua women were condescended to at all levels of society........just as
we know about the 50s, sixties etc. ..until the second feminist 
revolution...........
Their softness was exploited........Esther's 
passivity???..........................

Rachel, caught between old ideas (of woman) and the new(er) woman?    






 


----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Mon, August 2, 2010 9:08:37 AM
Subject: Esther & Stencil

http://blue.utb.edu/gibson/Esther.htm

Throughout his literary career, Henry Adams displayed an insatiable
interest in the nature of woman. In his early essay entitled, the
“Primitive Rights of Woman," Adams attempted to demonstrate the
importance of woman in the earliest foundations of  the family and
society. Adams' Tahiti (1901)demonstrated how primitive woman
utilizing her intuition, protected the society from man-caused
disaster. In his Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904) and Education
of Henry Adams (1905), \ Adams established woman, particularly the
European woman of the twelfth century, as a symbol of natural forceand
instinct.  Adams' "A Letter to American Teachers of History" (1910)
demonstrated what he regarded as scientific proof of the superiority
of instinct, which he depicted as the force underlying woman's great
force in society, over reason, which he regard­ed as the faculty most
used by man. In the Chartres and the Education, Adams offered the
theory that the highest point of unity in man's history had been
reached in the period of time, 1150 to 1250 A.D.  In these works and
in his "A Letter to American Teachers of History" he attempted proof
that mankind had steadily dissipated its energies from the thirteenth
century in accordance with Kelvin's Second Law of Thermo-dynamics thus
arriving at itspresent state of multiplicity in the twentieth century.
The period 1150 to 1250 A.D. was chosen by Adams as the period in
which "man held the highest idea of himself as a unit in a unified
universe" because of the strong cohesive nature of the Christian faith
at that time--a faith which resulted in the crusades and the great
cathedrals.  This period was marked by great feminine influence as
evidenced in the intense worship of the Virgin Mary and the erection
of many of the cathedrals, particularly  Chartres,in her honor.  Also
Adams recorded as proof the great power wielded by the three queens,
Eleanor of Guienne, Mary of Champagne, and Blanche of Castile, all of
whom helped to initiate the cult of courteous love.  As a contrast to
the position of woman in the thirteenth century, Adams noted in the
Education what he perceived as the degraded position of American woman
in the twentieth century.          Both of Adams' novels, Democracy
(1879) and Esther (1884) have as protagonists women unable to accept
suitors because of moral or religious conflicts.  Many critics writing
on these novels see these women as prototypes to Adams' conception of
the twelfth century woman.  While there is a small case for this
position, I believe it may be demonstrated that the two protagonists
resemble the modern American woman described in the Education much
more closely and, furthermore, that they show points of marked
dissimilarity to the Virgin of Chartres, Adams' symbol of twelfth
century womanhood.

      Esther, Henry Adams' second and last novel, was published in
1884 under the penname of Francis Compton Snow (Spiller iii).  Most
critics writing on the subject of Esther Dudley, heroine of the novel,
have made the error of identifying her with Adams' Virgin of Chartres
because they make too much of her intuition. The resemblance of Esther
Dudley to the modern American woman described in the Education is much
more marked. In Esther, one finds a heroine unable to unite with a
suitor and to assume a role within a family because of her
agnosticism, her suitor being Stephen Hazard--an Episcopalian
minister. The stage of the conflict corresponds to one of the two
spheres in which Adams believed women had and then lost influence the
church and the state.                                        Esther
Dudley is described  by another character as “one of the most marked
American types I ever saw” (26).  Later he said of Esther's type, "The
thing is too subtle and it is not a grand type like what we are used
to in the academies (28)."  The image given in the description of
Esther's dress and figure is reminiscent of the passage in the
Education in which Adams wrote of the "monthly magazine-made American
female [who] had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam
(384)."  Sex as a force in Esther's appearance was not mentioned; it
would be, I believe, a quality of the "grand type" as depicted perhaps
in Renaissance European art as well as in Adams' Virgin of Chartres,
whose predecessor was Venus (384).  A little later in the same
conversation, the same character noted that Esther is also modern:
“There is nothing medieval about her.” (28). Thus we find that unlike
the Virgin of Chartres, who was European and medieval, Esther was not
only American born but also American in type and, furthermore,
extremely modern.  This in itself indicates that Esther may well have
more in common with the American woman described in the Education than
with the Virgin of Chartres.                    Also,unlike the
Virgin, Esther was independent.  In the course of the novel, Esther
lost her father who had been the only member of her family, her mother
having died when Esther was young.