Matthew W. Slaboch

“If not in outright war, society will dissolve itself by other means. In a speech before the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Brooks [Adams] describes the undoing of America’s social fabric by excessive individualism. This great undoing starts in the family. When women reject their duties as wives and mothers—when they cease to be the “cement” that holds families together—they hasten society’s decline. Brooks goes so far as to say that women shirking their traditional duties constitutes “the ultimate form of selfishness” and tends toward “the final resolution of society into atoms.” Henry laments, too, in the Education that “the American woman was a failure.” The modern American “woman had been set free,” but women “were not content.” Unable to find her footing in the new age, the modern woman could not succeed in any of her old roles: “she had failed even to hold the family together.” This was not, Henry argued, entirely the fault of women, for he regarded the female sex as superior. Modern democratic life had simply de-sexed American society.”
― Matthew W. Slaboch, A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics