Tension as the Artist/Lover

In chapters 14-21 the dynamic between Rowland, Roderick, and Christina further begins to break down. In taking Roderick to Rome, Rowland has begun to unintentionally control a portion of Roderick’s agency. He surveys the artist, who surveys the subject (Christina Light), who surveys herself. Christina represents an example of the relationship a woman has within herself as both the spectator and the surveyed.[i] Christina creates herself, so she cannot really ever be recreated by another, and Rowland realizes this while Roderick does not.
Roderick Hudson, the artist, finds in Christina Light the purity of beauty essential to Hellenism. Matthew Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy, speaks of how true Hellenism manifests itself in striving to constantly learn (not know) more about perfect beauty. Perfect beauty can never be known, because it is a concept that defies mastery. Knowing something grants ownership and perfection can never be owned, it can only be something explored, for it is never tangible.
Herein lies Roderick’s dilemma: he wishes to know Christina Light and master her body—her individual body. In Renaissance art, the second pinnacle of Hellenism, artists generally always painted two female subjects, either Venus or the Virgin Mary. Mary, the most perfect and beautiful woman of Christendom, could be substituted as a Venus—the other most beautiful women of antiquity. The Virgin Mary and Venus can be seen as representing a sustained overarching metaphor for beauty throughout art. Just as the Renaissance preferred to substitute the general for the particular, likewise, antiquity favored the artistic intellectual study of Gods to that of the study of humans. Humanism presents a paradox; it exalts the human body, yet idealizes it to a point of sur-reality. Roderick, it seems, finds himself trapped in this paradox in his study and love of Christina Light. The academic interests conflict with the emotive ones. Roderick explains to Christina, “Hudson, as I understand him, does not need, as an artist, the stimulus of strong emotion, of passion…The sooner the passion is at rest therefore the sooner he will settle down to work…” (231). Passion contradicts perfection. Later, during a fight between Rowland and Roderick over Roderick’s love of Christina, Roderick exclaims, “‘I give up!’ said the sculptor at last. ‘I don’t understand it,’” (281). Notably, here, James refers to Roderick as the sculptor, thus further exposing the tension inherent in Roderick himself as his love confuses his art. Perfection is an airbrushed quality, one which people of living flesh can never possess. The sculptures of ancient Greece are cut from smooth marble, and though they show the rippling of muscle, they also betray the reality of flesh in its flaws. Christina, a woman not a statue, has flesh which dimples (among other things) that betray “perfection.” By her human nature Christina cannot be perfect, and therefore cannot truly be a worthy subject in the pursuit of pure Hellenistic ideals.
Rowland understands this contradict in Christina’s nature while in evades Roderick. While Rowland speaks with Christina she is described as idealizing herself: “She liked to idealise herself, to take interesting and picturesque attitudes to her own imagination,” (227). Christina literally composes herself as a piece as art—picturesque. For the true Hellenist or artist should be able to imbue perfection onto something that is not, for perfection is not found; it is learned and created. Therefore, Christina has taken over the role of artist; she is the one who turns herself into a piece of art through her mannerisms and habit.
[i] In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, Berger explains how women in society generally act as two people within themselves—the surveyor and the surveyed. Women function as spectacles to be seen, but are always also conscious of how they are seen; thus, women both exist to be seen and create themselves to be seen.