Roderick Hudson
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 Cover of 1969 Penguin Modern Classics edition of Roderick Hudson |
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| Author | Henry James |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | James R. Osgood and Company, Boston |
| Released | 20 November 1875 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 482 |
| ISBN | NA |
Roderick Hudson is a novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1875 as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly, it is a bildungsroman that traces the development of the title character, an extremely talented sculptor. Although the book shows some signs of immaturity - this was James' first serious attempt at a full-length novel - it has attracted mostly favorable comment due to the vivid realization of the three major characters: Roderick Hudson, superbly gifted but unstable and unreliable; Rowland Mallet, Roderick's limited but much more mature friend and patron; and Christina Light, one of James' most enchanting and maddening femme fatales. The pair of Hudson and Mallet has been seen as representing the two sides of James' own nature: the wildly imaginative artist and the brooding conscientious mentor.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
Rowland Mallet, a rich connoisseur of the arts, visits his cousin Cecilia in Northampton, Massachusetts and meets Roderick Hudson, an untrained but skilled sculptor. He agrees to take Roderick to Rome for training, and to support him financially while he learns more about his art. Rowland also falls in love with Roderick's fiance, Mary Garland, but does not reveal his feelings to anybody.
In Rome Roderick demonstrates his ability by sculpting some fine statues, but he also proves irresponsible and immature. He insults clients, gambles away lots of money, and falls hopelessly in love with Christina Light, a dangerous and beautiful woman who Rowland warns him against. Roderick soon finds himself depressed, demoralized, and incapable of work due to his infatuation with Christina. In order to escape Christina's influence, Rowland takes Roderick (along with the sculptor's widowed mother and Mary Garland) on a trip to Switzerland.
Meanwhile, Christina Light's worthless mother forces the girl into a loveless marriage with a very wealthy but incredibly dull Italian nobleman, Prince Casamassima. While in Switzerland, Rowland and Roderick happen to meet the now-married Christina, which sends Roderick into an even more severe depression. In a final shock, Rowland reveals to Roderick that he loves Mary Garland. Roderick wanders off into a dangerous Alpine storm. His body is found the next day at the bottom of a mountain ravine. The sculptor either committed suicide or was the victim of a subconsciously purposeful accident.
[edit] Major themes
As James says in the preface to the New York Edition of the novel, Roderick Hudson was his first attempt at a complex and full-length narrative. James had served a long apprenticeship as a short-story writer and had even tried a short novel: Watch and Ward (1871), which the author later disowned as if it had been a youthful folly. But Roderick Hudson not only demanded a much higher level of narrative skill than James' previous efforts. The book also treated themes very close to James' own career and life.
Would James burn out, as Roderick did, after a few successes? Could he maintain his artistic integrity while producing enough work to make the pot boil? Would his emotional life get in the way of sustained creativity? Although he couldn't have known the answers to these questions in 1875, James did manage to avoid the demons that tormented his weak-willed sculptor, and he consistently produced the highest quality work for four decades to come. There was a cost, though, as James ruefully conceded in letters written many years later, when he bemoaned the "essential loneliness" of his life. Was that avoidance of entangling emotional attachments necessary to James' concentration on his art?
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
F.R. Leavis, no easy touch as a critic, sounded a high note of praise, calling the book "an extremely interesting and extremely distinguished novel...remarkable in its maturity and accomplishment...has better claims to classical currency - is more worth reading and re-reading than the greater number of Victorian fictions that are commonly offered us as classics." Of course, not all opinions have been so favorable, including the author's own.
The first book publication was in late 1875, and a second edition was published in 1879. In 1907 James revised the book extensively for the New York Edition of his fiction. His preface to the revised version harshly criticized some aspects of the novel. James felt that the time-scheme of the book was too short and that certain plot elements strained credulity. Despite these strictures James brought back Christina Light as the title character of his 1886 novel, The Princess Casamassima. He confessed in the preface that Christina was too fascinating a character to be dropped after only one appearance.
An interesting issue in criticism of the novel has concerned the New York Edition revisions themselves. Some critics have found that the revisions deepened and enhanced the treatment of Roderick's tragedy with the full resources of James' mature style. Others, including Leavis, preferred the freshness of the earlier version.
An amusing footnote is that Leavis praised a number of passages in the novel as evidence for the superiority of the earlier version. Unfortunately for him, many of those passages turned out to have been added by James in the New York Edition. Leavis refused to be embarrassed and said that the revisions were still unnecessary.
[edit] References
- The Novels of Henry James by Oscar Cargill (New York: Macmillan Co., 1961)
- The Novels of Henry James by Edward Wagenknecht (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1983) ISBN 0-8044-2959-6
- A Companion to Henry James Studies edited by Daniel Fogel (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press 1993) ISBN 0-313-25792-2
