Whitman and Henry Adams

In college for my American and history and literature concentration, I had to take ONE class toward my degree that was in the twentieth century. Perhaps this explains why I am partial to the nineteenth–I was told at an *early* age that the twentieth didn’t matter. So be it.
I’ve been reading Whitman (Leaves of Grass of course) and The Education of Henry Adams and with the desire not to reduce anybody to anything but with the stronger desire to go to bed, I will say this. These are a brief version of the notes I took away from class for the last two weeks:
Whitman–feminine=death or the athletic mother of the race; democracy means we’re all alike and amorphous.
Henry Adams–motion, change, force vs. stasis; agency vs. principle; the feminine pulse that is power; evolution may mean decline.
Question of the day: is a capitalistic democracy inherently “unfeminine”?
Better question of the day: is the question more problematic than the answer that it might engage?
Marital fight of the day that is related to better question of the day: were Summer’s comments premised on deep-seated prejudices in our capitalistic democratic society and therefore dangerous? Or, does “being PC” (and calling his comments dangerous) preclude us from open conversation?