LIZZIE HEXAM AND THE ROLE OF A WIFE

In Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, when the angry Bradley Headstone proposes to Lizzie Hexam, he asks that she marry him because she can lead him to the good. Then in John Ruskin’s “Lilies of Queen Valley”, he describes what kind of education fathers should provide their daughters and what effect it will have on their daughters when they become wives. Our Mutual Friend and “Lilies of Queen’s Valley” were both written around the same time and then published in 1865, and both hold ideas theorizing and defining the role that a woman has for her husband. Ruskin posits a narrow role for women as only good social and emotional support for their husbands, but Dickens subverts these ideas that Ruskin and other writers at this time have to say about a woman’s role by having his villain uphold those ideas.

Ruskin’s lecture on female education embraces and encourages ideas about supporting female education in order to help mold their natural femininity and innate compassion into a useful tool for their husbands in the future. While Ruskin does go against those who think a woman is only good for being a “shadow and attendant” to her husband, he also thinks a woman’s “endless varieties of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power… infallible sense of dignity and justice…. fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifices… patient wisdom… gradually forms, animates, and exalts the characters of the unworthy lover” (pg. 2, 10). The interesting thing is that Ruskin said that women should not have a guiding hand over her husband, but all of the qualities he described above should be enough to influence her husband into becoming a better person. In the passage above, Ruskin’s descriptions of women are God-like, because her power is endless, infallible, and self-sacrificial, which is an impossible standard for women who are humans who get tired, make mistakes, and act selfishly. When their husbands fail, then the blame falls to the wives because they could not be good enough to keep her husband in place. By perpetuating these ideas about how a woman’s innate qualities affect her husband and his actions, it allows the man to escape blame for the negative thing and subjects wives to unjust scrutiny from the public eye. When society keeps hearing this message, then it embodies that women are only good for being wives, and their husband's failings will be their fault.

Readers get to see this dichotomy of a good woman/wife play out in the character, Bradley Headstone in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. Headstone is a respected headmaster at a school in the book, however the man he is around Lizzie frightens both her and the reader. He has rarely been able to control his temperament around her, causing him to seem explosive and violent, especially when he threatens her about meeting her again and then later threatens Lizzie’s other prospect, Eugene Wrayburn, with death. When Headstone proposes to Lizzie, he says, “But if you would return a favorable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good— every good — with equal force” (pg. 466). Even though Lizzie rejects him, this quote frames Lizzie as Headstone’s saving grace. When he says Lizzie should pull him to “any good” and “every good”, he implies that she is supposed to be the one holding him accountable for his actions, when he should be exercising that accountability for himself. Dickens does not expect us to sympathize with Headstone’s sentiments, but Lizzie’s situation makes her out to be the bad guy when she rejects Headstone’s offer, because her brother renounces her and then she is persuaded to leave town to salvage her reputation. As the heroine in Headstone’s fantasy, her failure to draw him to the good causes readers to fear about the future of Lizzie’s other prospect: Eugene Wrayburn.

Headstone’s ideologies can also be traced into Charley Hexam, Lizzie’s younger brother. Charley views Headstone as a mentor and a friend, and a way out for Lizzie. Readers know that education is important to both siblings, considering Lizzie sent Charley away from home so he could get his education, and she accepts a tutor from Eugene Wrayburn. As stated above, female education is a subject going through substantial change in the time both this book and Ruskin’s lecture was written. However, unlike for a man, a woman’s education alone cannot help raise her status. Charley tells her, “As Mr. Headstone’s wife you would be occupying a most respectable station, and you would be holding a far better place in society than you hold now…” (pg. 472). He drives in the point that she cannot escape the life she is living right now by pining after a rich man who could be playing her. The education Eugene provided helps raise her respectability, but his passivity could be dangerous for her future. But if she marries Headstone she will be supported by a steady income, unlike her past career of dragging dead bodies out of the river to rummage through their pockets. Reminded of the futility of her own situation, Headstone’s threats and Eugene’s passivity, Lizzie decides to leave town, leading us to where we are in the story so far. Dickens understands Lizzie cannot escape marriage without her ending up an old maid, but she cannot escape poverty either because of the lack of career options. However, by giving Lizzie a choice about her future and having her reject Headstone, Dickens ascribes Lizzie a level of power. By rejecting Headstone and separating herself from Eugene, she has removed herself from a situation where she will be blamed for anything that might occur between these two men.

Ruskin’s ideas about the role of women and the role of wives is echoed in Dickens. As the villain, Dickens forces Headstone to shoulder the blame of his own temperament and violent actions towards Lizzie. However, due to the society she lives in, Lizzie is the one who feels inclined to leave town and diffuse the situation between Headstone and Eugene. There is a complicated conversation going on in 1865 in the real world and in writing as everybody tries to understand the evolving role of women and wives. As education for women comes into conversation, Ruskin aims to keep women in the private sphere by saying a woman’s education is to benefit her husband, while Dickens plays with this idea and gives Lizzie Hexam more choices for her future.