Fiction, Fiction & Literature Classics, World Literature, Fiction Subjects

Esther

Name: Esther
Author: Henry Adams
ISBN: 9781406802795

by Henry Adams

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Overview

Esther (1884), the second of two novels by noted American historian Henry Adams (1838-1918), deals with a woman's inability to accept religious faith as men have formulated it. Esther Dudley, a young New York socialite and artist raised without religion, falls in love with Episcopal clergyman Stephen Hazard, but she cannot embrace his Christianity and remain true to herself. Displaying the subtle interplay of mind found in the best work of Henry James, Esther suggests the symbolism of the Virgin Mary that Adams would take up some twenty years later in his Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, a Study in Thirteenth-Century Unity: Esther rejects Hazard just as the Virgin rejected the scholastic formulation of the Trinity and the whole medieval system of moral law.

Synopsis

Does a spirited young painter who's fallen in love with a preacher need to comprise her own personal convictions to marry him? Find out in this surprisingly insightful work by Henry Adams, who originally published the work under the nom de plume, Frances Compton Snow.

While Esther's plot may sound like one pulled from today's romantic comedies, Adams creates a story filled with tension and personality clashes, painted against a backdrop of arguments about religion, science, art and poetry. A well-regarded historian and great-grandson of President John Adams, Henry Adams penned just two novels, Esther and Democracy.