Esther : a novel

"The comic story of [Esther Dudley] deals with a young, freethinking [New York] socialite [and painter] who falls desperately in love with an Episcopal minister [Stephen Hazard]. The result is a clash of intellects, a confrontation between faith and reason and a battle of the sexes. --Wikipedia.com."
"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."
"Henry Adams'' Esther puts a novel spin on the classic scenario of ill-matched lovers. Esther is a spirited, independent artist who also happens to be a committed atheist with deep disdain for organized religion. But when she falls in love with a minister, she starts to question all of her beliefs. Is it possible for this pair to overcome their differences?"@en