" When they shook hands with visitors at the reception, they used "...the mechanical action of toy dolls" (86). Madeleine said to Mr. French, who was accompanying her, "I had no conception how shocking it was!" To witness such phony, mechanical people going through mindless motions.
On page 87, Adams explains to the readers that besides Madeleine, there was not one person "...who felt the mockery of this exhibition." Everyone else thought the reception ("...the deadly dullness") was "natural and proper" but to Madeleine is was more like "a nightmare," or the twisted vision an opium addict might see. She felt a "sudden conviction" that this boring, mechanical scene represented "the end of American society." think this was Adams' way of showing his distaste for politics and for the way important powerful people go about their lives. Adams' father, after all, was a congressman and so Adams knew what the routine was like in the halls of Congress and the White House. I also think that Adams' book was showing the difference between men and women; men were (and still are) into power, business, politics and money. Women - at least the idealized version of women - were more into culture, the arts, charity work, duty to family and intimate friendships. But in this book, it seems that Madeleine, although she doesn't really accept the way that Senator Ratcliffe believes and behaves, needs Ratcliffe to be able to have her own access to POWER. In a way then, she is no better than the rest of the stiff, mechanical people she detests.
No doubt there are Madeleine-type women in Washington today, like there were after the Civil War; and these women today probably are searching for moral reasons to justify...
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