Voorjaar 2009 no.66
Love Imagination ,and beauty in Our Mutual Friend
by Robert J Heaman
The Dutch Dickensian Volume XXIX
When Lizzie Hexam, alone in the world
after her brother abandons her as a
result of her rejecting Bradley
Headstone's bizarre proposal of mar
riage, wishes she were "lying here with
the dead" in the burial ground she and
Bradley twice traverse: "A figure passed
by, and passed on, but stopped and
looked around at her. It was the figure
of an old man with a bowed head, wear
ing a large-brimmed low-crowned hat.
and a long-skirted coat" (428). This, of
course, is Riah, the Patriarch, as
Eugene calls him because his look is so
Hebraic (571). In a wonderful contrast
to Fagin's taking in Nancy, Riah ask
Lizzie, his "daughter," to "come home"
with him. Lizzie accepts his support,
and immediately as they emerge from
the graveyard onto the main thorough
fare to seek refuge in Riah's home, they
come upon "another figure loitering
discontentedly by" (430), Eugene
Wrayburn, who wishes to walk Lizzie
home.
Eugene, after making some ugly anti-
Semitic references to Riah, entreats
Lizzie to allow him to escort her alone.
Realising that she will not agree to this,
Eugene proposes that "MR. Aaron and I
will divide the
trust, and see
you home togeth
er. Mr Aaron on
that side; and I
on this" (432).
Eugene thereby
prevents Lizzie
from taking
refuge in Riah's
home after she
has been aban
doned at the
graveyard by her
brother.
"Nothing more
being said of
repairing to
Riah's lodgings,
they went direct to Lizzie's lodging. A
little short of the house-door she parted
from them, and went in alone" (432).
In this image of the three figures walking side
by side, it seems to me, Dickens offers an
emblem of beauty and promise - the potential
for England's future in the person of Lizzie -
being caught between what Matthew Arnold
describes in Culture and Anarchy as the
major forces of Hellenism and Hebraism in
the person of Eugene and Riah. At this point,
unable to choose between them, Lizzie
remains "alone"; Riah "steal[s] through the
streets in his ancient dress, like the ghost of a
departed Time"; and Eugene, lighting his
cigar, ponders Lightwood's catechism: "What
is to come of it? What are you doing? Where
are you going?" (432).
"What is to come of? What are you doing?
Where are you going?" These questions were
the focus of dominant cultural debate in
England in the 1860s. In a series of periodic
essays, first published in Cornhill Magazine in
1867-68 and collected as a book, Culture and
Anarchy, in 1869, Matthew Arnold attempted
to analyse the direction in which England was
going. "The whole scope of the essay," Arnold
says in his Preface:
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