Culture is the opiate of the people?: The end of radicalism in The Princess Casamassima

Hyacinth Robinson, the working-class radical who's agreed to become a terrorist assassin in order to overthrow the British ruling class, inherits some money when his beloved stepmother, the dressmaker "Pinnie," dies - 37 pounds, I think - and with this modest inheritance he becomes: a Henry James character! Yes, this character so unusual even unique in the world of H.James, walking the dismal streets of London at night and meeting in the back rooms of pubs to plot the overthrow of the government, now decides to take the gentleman's tour of Europe, where he admires the beautiful architecture and the high culture and generally pines for the woman that he left behind, the eponymous "Princess Casamassima." Yes, he's in danger of becoming one of the Jamesian feckless, privileged introverts - all on 37 pounds, which obviously went a lot farther in the 1880s than it would today. But wait, all is not lost in this novel, because we still need to see how the forces of politics, social class, and romance will intersect: someone will be destroyed, but who? You have to wonder, as noted in yesterday's post, where James's sympathies laid: he makes such a compelling case for the inequities and oppression that would drive any thinking young man with sufficient bravery to take radical action, yet he also seems to be saying, on a different level, that exposure to the beauty of high culture alleviates all of the inequity and oppression of class society: to culture is the opiate of the people. We'll see if Hyacinth gets deracinated, or emasculated.