The Education of Henry Adams - Chapter 24 The Dynamo and The Virgin (1900) Summary & Analysis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 91 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Education of Henry Adams.
Study Guide

The Education of Henry Adams - Chapter 24 The Dynamo and The Virgin (1900) Summary & Analysis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 91 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Education of Henry Adams.
This section contains 396 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy The Education of Henry Adams Study Guide

Chapter 24 The Dynamo and The Virgin (1900) Summary

Adams begins to develop his theory of Force. Guided by Langley of the Smithsonian, he attends the new Chicago Exhibition; it is amazing and revealing. The dynamo seems to him to call force from nothing, from the earth, and speeds everything up. Adams struggles to make sense of all this progress, and finds himself "caught between two kingdoms of force." He names these the Virgin and the Dynamo. The Virgin is the representative of the old unified sense of force, while the Dynamo represents its manifestation in modern life. Women had represented force in the past because of their power of reproduction. Force and sex had come together in the goddess, but now he says, if it survived at all, sex was only sentiment, blotted out of American life and art by the...

(read more from the Chapter 24 The Dynamo and The Virgin (1900) Summary)

This section contains 396 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy The Education of Henry Adams Study Guide
Copyrights
Gale
The Education of Henry Adams from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.