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Henry James's Capricciosa: Christina Light in Roderick Hudson and The Princess Casamassima

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

M. E. Grenander
M. E. Grenander*
Affiliation:
State University College of Education, Albany 3, New York
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Extract

In recent years, critical attention has focussed increasingly on The Princess Casamassima, Henry James's novel of the international revolutionary movement seething beneath the surface of society. The sad wisdom of the mid-twentieth century no longer finds incredible the plot earlier critics dismissed as footling melodrama; and with a recognition of its probability, students of James have undertaken a re-examination of the whole novel. Oddly enough, however, little attention has been paid to its reliance on Roderick Hudson, where the Princess Casamassima first appears. The one significant exception has been a short essay by Louise Bogan, though Christina's complexity and interest have attracted other writers. Yet Roderick Hudson deserves study for its own merits; and, as Miss Bogan has pointed out, the character of the Princess is difficult to interpret unless one also remembers her as Christina Light. It is not true, as Miss Bogan asserts (p. 472), that Christina is “the only figure [James] ever ‘revived’ and carried from one book to another,” for not only do Madame Grandoni and the Prince Casamassima share her transposition; the sculptor Gloriani, who makes his debut in Roderick Hudson, reappears in The Ambassadors. But it is true, as Cargill more accurately points out (p. 108), that “Christina is the only major [italics mine] character that James ever revived from an earlier work,” for he questioned the wisdom of indulging wholesale the writer's “revivalist impulse” to “go on with a character.” Hence Christina Light must have struck him as a very special case. He tells us that he felt, “toward the end of ‘Roderick,‘ that the Princess Casamassima had been launched, that, wound-up with the right silver key, she would go on a certain time by the motion communicated” (AN, p. 18). In the Preface to The Princess Casamassima he continues this train of thought: Christina Light, “extremely disponible” and knowing herself “striking, in the earlier connexion,… couldn't resign herself not to strike again” (AN, pp. 73, 74).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , June 1960 , pp. 309 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1960

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References

* I am grateful to Professors Leon Edel and Frederick J. Hoffman for critical suggestions with regard to this essay.

1 A modern edition, now unfortunately out of print, was published by the Macmillan Company in 1948. The best critical discussions are those by Lionel Trilling in his Introduction to this edition (pp. v–xlviii) and by Oscar Cargill, “The Princess Casamassima: A Critical Reappraisal,” PMLA, LXXI (1956), 97–117.

2 Bogan, “James on a Revolutionary Theme,” Nation, CXLVI (1938), 471–472, 474; Clinton Oliver, “Henry James as a Social Critic,” Antioch Review, vn (1947), 250; Viola Dunbar, “A Source for Roderick Hudson,” MLN, Lxiii (1948), 308; and Burdett Gardner, “An Apology for Henry James's ‘Tiger-Cat’, ” PMLA, LXVIII (1953), 694–695.

3 F. R. Leavis has said that it is “a very distinguished book that deserves permanent currency”; see The Great Tradition (Garden City, N. Y., 1954), p. 160. James himself included both it and The Princess Casamassima in one of two lists of five books each that he recommended an admirer of his (Stark Young) read; see his letter to Mrs. G. W. Prothero, 14 September 1913: The Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock (New York, 1920), ii, 333.

4 Preface to The Princess Casamassima, in The Art of the Novel, ed. Richard P. Blackmur (New York, 1947), p. 75 (hereafter referred to as AN).

5 Edel, “A Further Note on ‘An Error in The Ambassadors’, ” AL, xxiii (1951), 130; Zabel, ed., The Portable Henry James (New York, 1951), pp. 695–696.

6 See Helene Harvitt, “How Henry James Revised Roderick Hudson,” PMLA, xxxix (1924), 203–227; and Raymond D. Havens, “The Revision of Roderick Hudson,” PMLA, XL (1924), 433–434. Harvitt (pp. 209–210) says Christina is one of the characters who underwent the least change in the revision of Roderick Hudson, though one important change was to make her a Catholic instead of a Protestant who turned Catholic to marry the Prince. Miss Harvitt deals with changes between 1883 (i.e., 1879) and the Macmillan edition of 1921 (i.e., the NYE); Mr. Havens deals with changes between the 1876 and 1882 (i.e., 1879) editions. However, I cannot agree with their conclusions, insofar as the passages I have collated for this paper are concerned. Miss Harvitt says, concerning the changes for the NYE (and Mr. Havens agrees with her, though he thinks the changes from 1876 to 1882 were an improvement), that the revisions result in “an obscuring of spontaneous, natural passages, making them labored, heavy, ambiguous, and sometimes almost impenetrable” (p. 227). I find myself in much closer agreement with James: “What I have tried for is a mere revision of surface and expression…. The essence of the matter is wholly unaltered—save for seeming in places, I think, a little better brought out.” Letter to Mrs. Dew-Smith, 12 November 1906, Letters, n, 55. Yet this statement is a typical example of Jamesian litotes. There are many subtle touches in the NYE which indicate a careful and analytical reconsideration of Christina's character on the part of her creator and which clarify and sharpen her distinctive qualities. Furthermore, far from being “labored, heavy, [and] ambiguous,” the revisions tend consistently to greater simplicity and straightforwardness. These judgments the reader can confirm for himself on the basis of passages from both original and revised versions I shall quote later on in this paper.

7 Roderick Hudson, New York Edition, I (New York, 1907), 417–420. This edition is referred to throughout this paper as NYE.

8 Other critics, following James's own lead, have discussed Christina's influence on Roderick and Hyacinth, not theirs on her. See James's Prefaces to Roderick Hudson and The Princess Casamassima, AN, pp. 13, 74–75; Cargill, p. 108; Oliver, pp. 250–252; and Joseph Warren Beach, “The Figure in the Carpet,” The Question of Henry James, ed. F. W. Dupee (New York, 1945), p. 101. In terms of the novels as wholes, such emphasis is of course right and proper; in terms of an analysis of Christina's character, however, I have had to reverse the relationships and look at them from her point of view.

9 NYE, i, 406; not in the original version.

10 NYE, i, 407; not in the original version.

11 F. W. Dupee, Henry James, American Men of Letters Series, 1951, p. 159.

12 The Atlantic Monthly (hereafter referred to as AM), xxxv (May 1875), 573; NYE, I, 195–196

13 Throughout this paper, where the revisions have not seemed relevant to my purposes (often they consist chiefly in using contractions wherever possible—they're for they are, she's for she is, etc.), I have quoted only from the NYE. Where parallel passages are cited, the revised versions of both texts as they appeared in the NYE are given at the right; the original versions, as they were printed serially in AM (Roderick Hudson from January to December 1875; The Princess Casamassima from September 1885 to October 1886), are given at the left. Where the two texts differ, variant readings are printed in italics in both. Italics in the original are printed here in boldface type.

14 NYE, i, 196. The greater ease and naturalness of the revised version is striking, not only in this passage but in others to be cited.

15 See Cargill, p. 110: “Is it not credible that [Christina has drawn a parallel between the finer sensibility of Hya cinth and the talent of Roderick Hudson… ?”

16 AM, xxxv (March 1875), 301. In the 1876 edition (f 88), “she's living” becomes “she is living,” perhaps to brea the sequence of “she's.” In the NYE, however, James goe back to the contraction.

17 AM, xxxvi (July 1875), 58–59. In the 1876 edition (p. 234), the commas after “deliberateness” and “ear” are deleted; and “I'm sorry” becomes “I am sorry.”