Edenic romance in the jungles of Guyana
In a brief prologue, an unnamed narrator (presumably Hudson himself?) explains that the following story was told to him by a friend, a Venezuelan man named Abel. Decades earlier, Abel was the son of a wealthy family of Caracas. Having made enemies through some of his political activities, he flees impending arrest and ventures into the wilderness, heading towards Guyana. He settles with a tribe of Indians in their remote village. Venturing into the forests on hunting expeditions and nature walks, he discovers an area where the Indians fear to go. There he hears a strange voice in the air in a language he doesn’t understand, yet it somehow directs his actions nonetheless. Soon he discovers the voice belongs to a mysterious girl named Rima who lives in the forest and communes with the woodland creatures.
Like many a Victorian romance written by a male author, Green Mansions wreaks of sexual fantasy. It seems like every adventure writer of that era wanted to fall in love with a 17-year-old girl with the mind of an 11-year-old. Rima’s childlike innocence only makes today’s reader question Abel’s intentions. Rima is described as a white woman from some mysterious lost race. Even though Abel is a Latino, Hudson just couldn’t see his English and American readers fantasizing about a romantic heroine who was anything but light-skinned and potentially European. The description of Native Americans in the book seems ethnographically realistic but socially derogatory as they are shown as shifty, superstitious, and usually villainous.
I previously read Hudson’s novel A Crystal Age, a utopian story set in a future England. That was a pretty terrible book, and Green Mansions is quite an improvement. As they say, write what you know. Having worked as a naturalist and ornithologist in Patagonia for many years, Hudson demonstrates a great knowledge of and sensitivity toward the natural environment, flora, and fauna of South America. His nature writing is really the best aspect of Green Mansions. Hudson capably brings the setting vividly to life. The wilds where Abel and Rima dwell are depicted as idyllic, as befitting any romance, but not idealized to the point of defying natural realism. Amid this well-drawn environment, Hudson enacts an operatic melodrama but one that isn’t overly bogged down in Victorian clichés. Though the story is predictable at times, the ending is truly a surprise, and Hudson deserves credit for not settling for the easy way out.
The main problem with Green Mansions is that large passages of it are rather uneventful exercises in needless verbosity. Before anything of import happens, too much time is spent merely wandering around in the jungle. Hudson de-emphasizes the struggle for survival on a daily basis that such a lifestyle would entail, in favor of a too leisurely romance. Much ink is spent on Abel’s interior monologue as he contemplates, overanalyzes, and repeatedly describes his love for Rima. Even when the characters embark on a quest, it’s pretty much a waste of time. Nevertheless, Hudson manages to craft a love story sufficiently different from his Victorian contemporaries to be memorable. Green Mansions sometimes bored me, but I did enjoy Hudson’s scientifically realistic depictions of nature, drawn from his first-hand knowledge of South America.
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