Page "Henry James" Paragraph 30

The first period of James's fiction, usually considered to have culminated in The Portrait of a Lady, concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America.

The style of these novels is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th century fiction.

Roderick Hudson ( 1875 ) is a Künstlerroman that traces the development of the title character, an extremely talented sculptor.

Although the book shows some signs of immaturity — this was James's first serious attempt at a full-length novel — it has attracted favourable comment due to the vivid realisation of the three major characters: Roderick Hudson, superbly gifted but unstable and unreliable ; Rowland Mallet, Roderick's limited but much more mature friend and patron ; and Christina Light, one of James's most enchanting and maddening femmes fatale.

The pair of Hudson and Mallet has been seen as representing the two sides of James's own nature: the wildly imaginative artist and the brooding conscientious mentor.