Critical Essays
Social Philosophy
Hudson remained throughout his years a political and social conservative with little interest in liberalism despite his belief in the unity of all existence in nature, a sympathy toward lower creatures of the natural order, and his own humble origins. By no means a wealthy man and certainly beyond the pale of very fashionable circles in England, Hudson still showed aristocratic tendencies in his works. In Green Mansions, for instance, he expresses antipathy for the Indians; he berates them for their inferiority without giving any indications of possible improvement of their lot through education and help. Abel's quarrel with Nuflo ends in the former's harsh assertion, pompously delivered, that the old man should "moderate your language" because he is "addressing a superior." The basis for Abel's haughty manner is that, in the hero's words, "an old man" is talking to a "young one." Perhaps the Darwinian theories explain this attitude with their emphasis upon change and the rise to power of new creatures after the defeat of old, exhausted beings. Nevertheless, Hudson avoids in Green Mansions any direct references to his own times. Neither the social nor political issues of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries find their way into his romance.