Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first of September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare, he determined to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow of a nephew of his father.
A fairly simple opening line except that two characters are mentioned and neither is the title character. In fact, Roderick Hudson won’t appear for quite a few pages after. Still, the entire narrative pretty much revolves around the fact that Rowland Mallet is going to Europe. If he doesn’t make that decision, it’s an entirely different story.
Before him sat Christina Light, in a white dress, with her shoulders bare, her magnificent hair twisted into a classic coil, and her head admirably poised. Meeting Rowland’s gaze, she smiled a little, only with her deep gray eyes, without moving. She looked divinely beautiful.
This is the introduction to the major character of Christina Light. It is the narrator’s words, but it might well be the author speaking for himself. Every once in a while an author falls in love with one of his creations. This apparently happened with Henry James. While he would later look back on this very early effort with some disdain, nearly a dozen years after its appearance, he would publish a sequel of sorts: The Princess Casamassima. That being, of course, the name that Christina takes in Roderick Hudson following her marriage.
“Do you know I sometimes think that I ’m a man of genius, half finished? The genius has been left out, the faculty of expression is wanting; but the need for expression remains, and I spend my days groping for the latch of a closed door.”
The artist of the story is its title character. One of the themes of the novel is how artistic genius is dependent upon others who are not necessarily artistic themselves, but either possess an appreciation for art or the money required to transform talent into success. Rowland fits both bills and this half-narcissistic, half self-pitying assertion by Rowland indicates the tragedy of those capable of appreciating art, but not creating it.
“Roderick’s standard is immensely high; I must do him that justice. He will do nothing beneath it, and while he is waiting for inspiration, his imagination, his nerves, his senses must have something to amuse them. This is a highly philosophical way of saying that he has taken to dissipation, and that he has just been spending a month at Naples — a city where ‘pleasure’ is actively cultivated — in very bad company.”
The tragedy of Roderick Hudson is that he is the full-fledged artistic genius that Rowland bemoans he is not, yet fails to appreciate the gift so much that he can withstand the most self-destruction impulses obstructing his path to success. Rowland’s intimation here is that Roderick’s claims to an unwillingness to sacrifice himself to lower standards is really just a manifestation of that self-destruction under the guise of aesthetic purity.
“I declare there’s a career for a man, and I’ve twenty minds to decide, on the spot, to embrace it — to be the consummate, typical, original, national American artist! It’s inspiring!”
With his first full-length novel, Henry James commenced upon a career of writing about American expatriates as a way of writing about America. Rowland is the first of many Americans in a James novel to manifest a decidedly ambivalent feeling about his homeland and expression a preference for Europe in the form of residency. In response to a vocal expression of this ambivalence Roderick—who has yet to travel out of the country—defends his country and then goes further to entertain the idea of linking that defense with an artistic commitment. One of the first signs of Roderick’s impulse control problems which serve to create a legacy of self-destruction is to almost immediately turn his back on the excitement being asserted here and join Rowland on that trip to Europe mentioned in the opening line.
