The 1906 nonfictional work The Education of Henry Adams is noteworthy for its author never mentioning his deceased wife, Clover Adams, who committed suicide after the couple had been married for 15 years. However, Clover is textually present in Adams's attempt to create a dissipative theory of history that likens the development of the modern world to thermodynamic heat-death. The fact that Clover's suicide cannot be compartmentalized in such a theory of history is an example of a Lacanian ”lack” as described by Slavoj Žižek, and ultimately means that Clover exists as a sublime object in the text rather than a focus of mourning.