Voorjaar 2009 no.66
25
The Dutch Dickensian Volume XXIX
instincts and forces which rule our life, seeing
them as they really are, connecting them with
other instincts and forces, and enlarging our
whole view and rule of life" (120). Thus
Arnold sees a return to Hellenism as the
answer to England's cultural crisis.
In the scene with Lizzie walking along the
thoroughfare between Riah as father figure
and Eugene as would be-lover, Riah repre
sents what Arnold identifies as the image of
"Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and rescue
from the thrall of vile affections" (113). Riah
will preserve Lizzie from Eugene, will rescue
her "from the thrall of vile affections." Dickens
goes to some length to identify Riah with a
stereotypically Hebraic past in his introduc
tion of him:
an old Jewish man in an ancient coat, long of
skirt and wide of pocket. A venerable man,
bald and shining at the top of his head, and
with long grey hair flowing down at its sides
and mingling with his beard. A man who
with graceful Eastern action of homage bent
his head and stretched out his hands with his
palms upward.... In the entry hung his rusty
large-brimmed low-crowned hat, as long out
of date as his coat; in the corner near it stood
his staff - no walking stick but veritable
staff. (2g2;bk 2, eh. 5)
On the other side of Lizzie in Dickens's
emblematic representation, Eugene, who had
come "loitering discontentedly by" (430; bk.2,
ch. 5), appears very much like a figure from
the pagan world suffering from the "self dis
satisfaction and ennui" that alma Venus, the
life-giving and joy-giving power of nature
could not save her followers from, "and from
whom, according to Arnold, the ethical
impulse of the Hebraic force toward right
practice or conduct was necessary (Arnold
114). The cigar-smoking, languid, indolent,
ridiculous Eugene is every bit as much a
stereotype of decadent Hellenism as Riah is
one of tradition-bound Hebraism. And one
might suspect that what Lizzie will need is the
best of both if she is to find a true home in
which to flourish and realise her potential.
After Lizzie has been abandoned to the grave
yard of the past, however, she will not flourish
in Riah's "home," to which he steals, "like the
ghost of a departed Time. "Dickens does not
see hope in a retreat to the dead traditions of
the past. And if Eugene is to become worthy of
Lizzie, the "heroine," as he later calls her,
Dickens, the "artist", as he identifies himself
in the Postscript (872), insists that Eugene
must pursue the Hellenic, must expand his
consciousness. Eugene must develop from a
mere decadent stereotype to genuine
Hellenism; he must find "some sound order
and authority," (my italics) just as England
must at time in history. And as Arnold says,
"This we can only get by going back upon the
actual instincts and force which rule our life,
seeing them as they really are, connecting
them with other instincts and forces, and
enlarging our whole view and rule of life"
(120).
Lizzie's beauty energises Eugene; but he does
not know if this means because, again, he does
not know himself, he is not able to connect his
forehead with his breast. When he is trying to
analyse
what he should do regarding Lizzie, immedi
ately before he is bludgeoned nearly to death
by Headstone, he debates whether to marry
her or to leave her. He fears "outfacing"
M.R.F., his father, because he applies his
father's legal reasoning to the situation: "You
wouldn't marry for some money and some sta
tion, because you were frightfully likely to
become bored. Are you less likely to become
bored, marrying for money and no station?"
(742). M.R.F. offers Eugene no "sound order
of authority" on which to base his decision.
No, Eugene concludes, he is not sure of him
self. Eugene is at this point so unsure of him
self, so incapable of seeing things as they real
ly are, that he has to let Lizzie do his thinking
for him in their leave-taking conversation
before Headstone's brutal attack. "I never
thought until to-night that you needed to be
thought for," Lizzie tells Eugene; but as long
as he does and since "there is nothing for us in
this life but separation; then Heaven help you,
and Heaven bless you!" (741). And as long as
Eugene cannot connect his forehead with his
breast, his head with his heart, as long as he is
not in touch with "the actual instincts which
rule our life, seeing them as they really are,
