Why "different vibrations...walk hand in hand": Homosocial Bonds in Roderick Hudson

In the preface to the New York Edition of Roderick Hudson Henry James observes that “the determinant function attributed to Christina Light, the character of well-nigh sole agent of [Roderick’s] catastrophe that this unfortunate young woman has forced upon her, fails to commend itself to our sense of truth and proportion” (RH1 43). In the preface to The American James is even more critical of his work. Discussing the character of Claire de Cintré he notes: “with this lady, altogether, I recognise, a light plank, too light a plank, is laid for the reader over a dark ‘psychological’ abyss” (AM1 14). In these comments James pinpoints a major weakness in each of his early novels. Although the flaws are different—Christina Light is a strong character required to carry an excessive plot burden, while Claire de Cintré is a weak character who never emerges from the shadowy realm of idealization—their effect on the novels is oddly similar. Both Roderick Hudson and The American exhibit a profound pessimism about heterosexual relationships. In both, heterosexual attraction is destructive to all concerned, but particular emphasis is placed on homosexuality’s deleterious effect on the male characters.

Heterosexuality’s destructiveness in these novels operates on three related levels. On the level of narrative, neither Rowland Mallet nor Christopher Newman is able to successfully complete the marriage plot. Each novel concludes with the image of the protagonist suffering from a romantic disappointment from which, the narrative implies, he is not expected to recover. At the most literal level, heterosexual obsession is the direct cause of a young man’s tragic, untimely death in each novel: Valentin de Bellegarde dies in a duel over Mlle Nioche, a parvenu with whom he is obsessed, and Roderick Hudson dies in a fall in the Swiss Alps, where he has gone to walk off his despair over Christina Light. On the most general, structural level, heterosexual obsession has the power to destroy men’s lives because it causes promising young men like Valentin and Roderick to reject the mentorship of wealthy older men who wish to help them achieve artistic or business success and instead to risk death to prove their manhood and defend their honor. Roderick Hudson’s attempt to scramble up a sheer rock wall in the Roman Coliseum to pick a flower for Christina Light is emblematic of this pattern.

The tensions surrounding heterosexuality in James’s early novels may be usefully illuminated by focusing on the intersection of heterosexual love relationships and homosocial relationships between men in Roderick Hudson. Similar patterns in The American will be discussed briefly in the last section of this essay. The intersection of the homosocial and the heterosexual takes the shape of triangular relationships between two men and a woman. My understanding of the way in which these triangles function is loosely based on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s model of homosocial triangles: structural relationships in which a woman is exchanged (not necessarily literally) between men in a transaction that serves to solidify the bonds of homosocial desire and power between men and over women, on which patriarchal society is based (Between; see also Rubin). Both Roderick Hudson and The American are structured around a series of such triangles: Roderick-Rowland-Mary, Rowland-Roderick-Christina, Valentin-Newman-Claire, Newman-Valentin-Noémie; male-male-female triangles in which homosocial relationships are privileged while the possibility of heterosexual relationships is viewed with varying degrees of suspicion and pessimism.

Other critics have noticed the homoerotic tensions in James’s early fiction, and these analyses tend to focus on the repression of sexual desire between men. ¹ In her discussion of the disruptive impact of feminine sexuality on the ideology of James’s nineteenth-century realistic novels, Priscilla Walton summarizes some of these views and concludes that, although homoerotic tension is patently present in Roderick Hudson, it remains submerged: “Because [homosexuality] cannot be articulated overtly, it cannot be posited as an alternative solution [to heterosexuality]” (43). ² Walton is correct in asserting that homosexuality per se cannot be explicated, but her assumption that...