The Hermes in Henry James's "The Last of the Valerii"

The Hermes in Henry James's "The Last of the Valerii" by Michael Clark, Widener University At one point in Henry James's "The Last of die Valerii," the narrator mentions that Valerio is pondering an ancient Greek statue of the god Hermes. Since marriage and sexuality are central themes to many of Henry James's works, it is very possible that the traditions surrounding the Hermes play a role in this story. Indeed, given James's lifelong preoccupation with ancient Greek culture, it would be surprising if he were not aware of the sensational aspects of the Hermes tradition. Thus the statue may provide important clues for our understanding of the story. I One of the more extensive treatments of "The Last of the Valerii" has come in a recent article by Dorothy Berkson, who argues that Count Marco Valerio and his new wife Martha represent two contrary attitudes towards experience. Since my reading of the Hermes episode leads to an interpretation of the story in direct opposition to Berkson's, it will be useful to review her argument. In her analysis, Berkson draws on William James's distinctions of philosophers falling into two broad categories, "the tender-minded" and "die toughminded ." The former are essentially idealistic and devoted to illusions. The latter look at life directly as it is, witiiout illusions. The Count, Berkson argues, is an idealist and tiius suffers "from a sexual malaise usually associated witii Victorian England and America" (83). Martha, on the other hand, is a "woman of flesh and blood" (85). Consequendy, "Martha's natural vitality and passion are repressed as she tragically tries to model herself after die Ideal fixed in her husband's imagination" (85). The result is that their marriage suffers a "sterility" caused by the Count's "preferring a frozen Ideal to a living, passionate woman" (85). But this reading, I would suggest, is more "tender-minded" than it need be because Berkson does not take into account the ambiguity and the penetrating vision of human sexuality that the story offers. The clue to James's values here, I believe, lies in the puzzle of the Hermes. In a recent article, James Ellis convincingly argues that in "The Beast in the Jungle" Henry James uses the ancient setting of Pompeii "to suggest not just the rediscovery of life but the rediscovery of sexual life" (29). The ancient past is equated with man's primitive nature, especially sexuality. The same seems to be true in "The Last of the Valerii," where James makes use of the Hermes, not to The Hermes in Henry James's "The Last of the Valerii" 211 symbolize the "ideal" marriage, but to evoke die issue of sexuality in marriage, in particular, a pagan sexuality. II The sexual aspect of the couple's relationship is clearly one of the problems in their marriage. James indicates this in a subtle way by his allusions to the Hermes which the narrator finds Valerio pondering. The Greek Hermes (the equivalent to the Roman Mercury) was the god of messengers, of the home, and of companionship. He was also in ancient Greece a prime symbol of what Eva Keuls calls the "phallocracy" of Greek civilization (1-15). Statues of Hermes were prevalent throughout ancient Athens, and their distinguishing characteristics were, according to Keuls, "the shape of plain rectangular columns except for two carved features: the head and the erect genitals" (16). James's descriptions of the statue seem to indicate tiiat it represents pagan phallicism—something repressed by die subsequent Roman and the later civilizations. This is made clear by Valerio's discussion of the Hermes. On the one hand, Valerio associates the Hermes with something very negative. When he was a child, he says, "I used to be afraid of him" (89). The reason, though, is associated witii modem Christianity: die statue's frown "used to remind me of a bushy-browed old priest who taught me Latin and looked at me terribly over the book when I stumbled in my Virgil" (89). In Valerio's mind, die statue is associated witii the repressiveness of modem Christianity, especially as the original Greek eroticism is sublimated into the work of...