Roderick Hudson
Hudson comes to symbolize the self-destructive artist doomed to failure because the control of his creative impulse comes at the expensive of the control of his every other impulse. Hudson is the portrait of the idealist who lacks the requisite requirements for compromise which is necessary for success over the long term.
Rowland Mallet
As Hudson’s wealthy patron whose assistance allows Hudson to uncompromisingly pursue his art, it would be easy to assume Mallet is simply a symbol for art patronage. His literally Puritanic upbringing, however, infuses the unearned wealth of Rowland with a moral conviction. As a result, he becomes symbolic of the most necessary artistic compromise of all: the insistence that art serve a purpose. He is, in this view, a symbol of the antithesis the “art for art’s sake” ideology.
Ancient Greeks and Jews
As part of his uncompromising commitment to an idealistic view of art, Hudson rejects advice to base a work of sculpture on Judas or Cain. They represent ugliness and as, Hudson remarks, “I’m not a Hebraist.” In fact, he lays claim to a commitment to only create art which is beautiful by declaring “I’m a Hellenist.” So, at least in Hudson’s mind, ugly art symbolizes the aesthetics of Hebrews while the ancient Greeks symbolize the aesthetics of beauty. There is, of course, a well-known term that applies to this mode of thinking so another element may be the Hudson is also a symbol of anti-Semitism.
Sam Singleton
Sam Singleton is another artist with whom Rowland comes into contact as a patron. He doesn’t possess the natural talent of Hudson nor the potential for genius. However, he does possess something which Hudson does not which Mallet finds, in its own way, as admirable as pure artistic talent. He is equipped with a work ethic that Mallet doesn’t require and Hudson will never develop and the result is an output that Hudson could never match even if he lessened the restrictions on his aesthetic purity. Singleton symbolizes the compromise between talent and purpose that allows an artist to make a living.
Mr. Striker
Roderick Hudson is a novel that came early enough in the career of Henry James that he would later insist readers eschew what came before and consider it to be his first novel. Many of the novels which come afterward take Americans and situate them in Europe. In these novels is almost always one person who represents the American resistance to everything continental at the insistence that anything American is at least as good and, more likely, better. Mr. Striker is the originating figure of that symbolic American.
