Book Review: Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson

Green Mansions
by W.H. Hudson
Overlook Duckworth (New York & London)
Originally Published 1904
pp 271

A wealthy young man known as “Abel” flees the revolution in Venezuela around 1840 and embarks on an adventure in the wild, uncharted jungles of Guyana. The jungles are inhabited by lush forests, mountains and rivers that are pristine, untouched. Wild animals never before seen appear within the infinite walls of the “green mansions.” The most magnificent being of all is the beautiful and wild Rima, a young woman who speaks in a strange, lilting language only known to birds and her lost tribe. While Abel’s journey is fraught with peril: gold hunting, warring bands of native tribes, petty rivalries, superstition, and magic, he becomes forever smitten with Rima.

The story is told by Abel (to an unnamed narrator) many years after his adventure in the jungle and long after Rima has died. Abel, now an old man, has never recovered from his journey into the jungle, or from his love affair with Rima. The raw physical beauty of the jungle and the bird woman Rima is captured in this tale of enchantment, where nature is unspoiled and uncorrupted by human beings. Abel likens Rima to a hummingbird…but she is much more. … “you are like all beautiful things in the woods—flower, and bird, and butterfly, and green leaf, and frond, and little silky-haired monkey high up in the trees.”

Author W.H. Hudson’s expertise as an ornithologist and naturalist shines through the dense canopy of the forest to illuminate the fragility of nature. Hudson’s core message is simple: take care of the forest or ultimately it will be consumed by flames. The message is far from heavy handed and is only intuited through the vivid rendering of unforgettable characters. There is purity in Hudson’s exquisitely crafted prose. Green Mansions is a tale of passion, and it is easy to see why it inspired an early 20^th Century ecological movement.

Green Mansions has endured for over a century because of the author’s all- embracing comprehension of both nature and of what it means to be a human being.  The story, romance in its true narrative form, encompasses the texture of infinity: the sky, the rich brown soil, the animals, the trees, wind, rain and stars. Far greater than one man’s love for a woman. Rima represents the splendor, beauty and vulnerability of the natural world. The rain, the wind, the water in the streams, and the air we breathe, Rima represents all the things in the world that are natural and untamed. Rima’s language without words is tender spiritual music that captures the essence of her soul, and of all souls in every living thing. 

Author Joseph Conrad stated that Hudson's writing "was like the grass that the good God made to grow and when it was there you could not tell how it came.” “Green Mansions,” both spiritual and profound, symbolizes the attainment of perfect love and beauty in this life—that is futile, yet accomplished. The quest to pursue beauty is all that matters.

In the end of his story, Abel is visited by a moth that flies dangerously close to the fire keeping his hut warm. He opens his door, trying to help the moth escape the fire. The moth cannot resist the light, spirals downward in its flight and is consumed by the flames. Once so alive with its silken gossamer wings, then in a flash the moth is destroyed by fire. Abel intuitively understands the moth is like Rima, once beautiful and untouchable, who also perished in fire. Abel is left holding her precious bones that represent all that is glorious about being alive in the natural world.