James's Morality in Roderick Hudson

James's Morality in Roderick Hudson by Greg W. Zacharias, New York University In Roderick Hudson Henry James deploys a constructive satire of representative character types and relations in order to advance a commentary on American artists and patrons. I call the satire constructive because of the way James endorses an alternative to that behavior which he criticizes. This alternative locates the moral center in the novel and defines James's morality. It patterns his ethical standard in given circumstances. In addition to offering a reading of James's ethics through the various character relations in the novel, I will support my reading by placing key linguistic gestures from the novel in context with analogous gestures from James's essays on Matthew Arnold, the Notebooks, "The Art of Fiction," essays on Emerson and Carlyle, the New York Edition prefaces, and letters to the young sculptor Hendrik Andersen, in which James's meaning is clearer than it is in the novel. Language outside the fiction thus builds an interpretive context for language in the fiction. Beyond the primary satire of Rowland Mallet and Roderick Hudson and the secondary commentary on artists and patrons, and beyond the reinforcement of the satire and the constructive alternative carried by secondary characters, especially Cecilia, Mary Garland, Christina and Mrs. Light, Mrs. Hudson, and Gloriani, James ultimately extends his satire past these types of national and international fools to a broad satire of the moral foolishness and knavery which he sees in human relations.1 When James satirizes Rowland Mallet's selfish motives and harmful conduct, he also satirizes through Mallet the motives and conduct of similarly selfish American art patrons who aim to gain personal and social status rather than to enrich American civilization and the life of the individual artist. When James satirizes the egotistical motives and foolish conduct of Roderick Hudson, he also satirizes American artists, then all selfish human beings of Hudson's temperament who share his attitudes and manner. He does not use Hudson to attack all American artists. As an alternative to Mallet's conduct, James offers Gloriani. As an alternative to Hudson, he presents Singleton. Gloriani stands as a model of the patron who nurtures, corrects, and encourages his charge. Singleton stands as an example of the artist who can see and accept the practical limits of his talent and who can work within them to gain personal satisfaction and to give public pleasure with his work. As Singleton learns the proper relation of art to life through Gloriani's tutelage, James himself attempts to give a tutorial lesson to his readers through the character relations in Roderick Hudson. The Henry James Review 11(1990): 115-32 ©1990 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 116 The Henry James Review James first indicates the direction of the satire through narrative intrusions. These breaks in the realism, read in context with allusions in the text and the extrafictional gestures mentioned above, point to the underlying morality of Roderick Hudson. Goetz reads character relations in the James novel "as the objective correlative of a meaning that lurks behind or, more precisely, in it" (69). Such a description locates the didactic foundation of James's fiction. And since that foundation derives from a personally held attitude toward human relations, it also expresses James's own "equipment for living."2 In the novel's opening paragraph James violates the narrative rule he criticizes Trollope for breaking. He highlights the novel's artificiality when he describes what "will be part of the entertainment of the narrative to exhibit..." {AW 1343, RH 1). James indicates in the preceding line that the plot is only for "entertainment." We must look elsewhere for ideas. The second cue James gives his readers that he is not developing a realistic novel for its own sake occurs in a key scene—the confrontation between Mallet and Hudson over Mary Garland, Hudson's fiancée. "It's very strange!" says Hudson, "It's like something in a novel" {RH 467). Since this is "something in a novel," the comment breaks the realism, reminds us of the artifice, and distracts us from the plot so that we are more receptive to the meaning...