Other editions of book Democracy an American Novel

FOR reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was in excellent health, but she said that the climate would do her good. In New York she had troops of friends, but she suddenly became eager to see again the very small number of those who lived on the Potomac. It was only to her closest intimates that she honestly acknowledged herself to be tortured by ennui. Since her husband's death, five years before, she had lost her taste for New York society; she had felt no interest in the price of stocks, and very little in the men who dealt in them; she had become serious. What was it all worth, this wilderness of men and women as monotonous as the brown stone houses they lived in? In her despair she had resorted to desperate measures. She had read philosophy in the original German, and the more she read, the more she was disheartened that so much culture should lead to nothing—nothing.

Henry Adams’ Democracy is a great novel that discusses the conflict between political and personal interest. Though written in the 1880’s and first published in 1918, the novel is as relevant today is it was a hundred years ago and a very deep and thought-provoking narrative, indeed. The protagonist of the story is Madeleine Lee, a 30-year-old widow from New York who becomes bored with her social life and decides to go to Washington with her sister to become involved in politics. She opens a salon in the capital and soon her guests include the most influential people in the city. She is soon courted by not one, but two men: Silas Ratcliffe, a politician who wants to marry Madeleine in order to promote his political career and John Carrington, who truly loves Madeleine. Ratcliffe uses his influence to eliminate his competitor by offering him a remote, but well-paying job, thus trying to get closer to Madeleine.