The Mark of Cain: Murder, Community and Brotherhood in Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend
April 10, 2007
The reader of Our Mutual Friend experiences the interiority of the murderer in all of its complexity, prompting the critic Edmund Wilson to observe that here Dickens’s “probing of the psychology of the murderer…becomes ever more convincing and intimate” (Collins qtd. 282). The murderer Bradley Headstone is both the Everyman who is capable of murder, and the vile, inhuman murderer who is beyond the pity of his narrator. Dickensian heroes strive for community. Throughout his life, Headstone fails to establish social ties, and is overwhelmed by alienation and exile. Community breeds brotherhood, yet Headstone turns against his social “brother” and seeks to kill him. Headstone is an impotent, inept member of society, and, as a murderer, becomes the Cain of Genesis. His “brother’s blood” cries to God from the ground, and Headstone, like Cain, becomes “a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 10). The mark placed upon him spares him from society’s punishment. Even so, death and damnation are upon his head. By his action, Headstone’s personal and social identity is destroyed utterly, and in the end execution is accomplished by the only hand that is capable of doing so: his own.
Bradley Headstone has no social name or standing. He is a hardworking Schoolmaster, motivated by a fierce desire for social identity and acceptance. He actively works at the pretense of respectability, and appears rigidly respectable when first introduced in the novel: Headstone, “in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair-guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man” (qtd. Collins 279). This overemphasized decency is a façade. Headstone merely “looked” decent; he has “depths” that he cannot control (qtd. Collins 279; Dickens 396). Eager as he is to suppress his depths, Headstone is even more eager to throw off his obscure origins. This further alienates him from society, since his rejection of “shameful origins” causes “a loss also of the class vitality they produce” (Morris 133). Headstone is not of the upper class and refuses to acknowledge his place anywhere lower. He is without family, and without name.
As the critic Jeremy Tambling notes, Bradley’s name is itself conflicted (205). His surname is that which is “in a churchyard” (Dickens 795). “Bradley” is, according to Tambling’s research, not used as a first name in the nineteenth century. It is as if he has assumed a second surname, to increase the illusion of respectability. Tambling further develops Headstone’s sense of namelessness alongside the character’s headlessness – he is indistinct, and socially inconsequential (209). This headlessness is emphasized by many critics who note that, while haunting his rival Eugene Wrayburn Headstone becomes a “haggard head” that floats about in the darkness (Carey 96).
Nameless and homeless, Headstone seeks to force his way into community. He latches onto a promising young student, Charlie Hexam, and determines to marry Hexam’s sister Lizzie. The Hexams are decidedly from the lower classes, and Headstone recoils from such an association. Even so, he determines to wipe away shame with a plan of enforced education and an emphatic rejection of their original status. Headstone’s faith in the power of hard work and intense education is undermined by his personal failure, as noted by the critic Jack Lindsay:
By bettering himself […] he has destroyed himself; he has become a frenzied cog in a mechanistic universe of
phoney knowledge and money-values Dickens, in his picture of this frustrated man, makes a decisive rejection
of Victorian educational methods, the whole outlook which imagined progress as mechanistic reduplication
and which wanted education to further a false concept of man (qtd. Johnson 1034).
Headstone’s own efforts at self-recreation have failed dismally. He is “phoney,” “frustrated,” and “false,” and his artificial family would be exactly that (qtd. Johnson 1034). Such a family does not come to be, as Lizzie Hexam refuses to marry Headstone, setting in motion his descent into madness and, in time, murder.
The critic John Carey says, somewhat derisively, that Headstone is “made into a model to illustrate another of Dickens’ pet social theories: that the murderer is never sorry for his crime” (28). Although this is an important aspect of Dickens’ perspective on murder, both Dickens’ theory and the character of Headstone are much more complex. As Collins puts it, Dickens “had always shared the common assumption that murderers are, by temperament, monsters of vice” (254). Murderers are monsters, not men. They are outside the realm of humanity, and therefore, alienated from human sympathy. Even while actively seeking the abolition of capital punishment, Dickens was unerring in his belief that murders were damned and undeserving of pity. One of his main arguments against capital punishment was that execution made murderers the unworthy objects of sympathy (254). At the same time, early in Our Mutual Friend, a police Inspector comments that, “If a murder, anybody might have done it. Burglary or pocking-picking wanted ‘prenticeship. Not so murder. We were all of us up to that” (26-7). Therefore, Everyman can be a murderer, and such universal susceptibility should compel sympathy.
Bradley Headstone is caught between these two theories. He is the realization of the murderous potential in Everyman. Headstone’s hatred of Eugene Wrayburn drives him to madness. He expresses this madness as something buried deep within his soul and brought up against his will:
No man knows till the time comes what depths are within him. To some men it never comes; let them rest and
be thankful (396).
These are the depths that are concealed, imperfectly, by his Schoolteacher costume. Arguably, Wrayburn is encapsulated in the category of “some men” who never realize their own depths (396). Headstone significantly identifies the timing of his madness – it occurs when “the time comes” (396). E. Slater Davies argues in his introduction to the novel that Headstone would have lived a respectable, honorable life “had it not been for his encounter with Eugene Wrayburn and his passion for Lizzie Hexam” (xiv). Likewise, as noted by the Inspector, murder requires no apprenticeship, and Everyman is capable of it. At the same time, Headstone’s social and moral damnation is decisive and unyielding. He does not even accomplish his murderous aim, yet he has no hope of salvation. Little, if any, sympathy is granted to him. He is driven, provoked, and hounded to madness by Eugene Wrayburn, and by Dickens himself.
The relationship of Headstone and Wrayburn has provoked significant scholarly debate, some of which is formulated on theories of homoeroticism. The critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in particular argues that Headstone struggles against his passion for Wrayburn. Headstone does evidence an obsessive and violent sexuality, blurring the lines of violence and desire in reference to Lizzie Hexam. His mania for Wrayburn is violent, obsessive, and conflicted. The blanket application of homoerotic theory to explain Headstone is, however, far too simplistic. It ignores Headstone’s critical characteristic – social impotence. He is inept in society, incapable of reaching beyond the barriers within his own mind. He accomplishes much as a schoolteacher, but his career attains nothing more than stagnancy. Impotence carries with it a sexual implication as well – just as he has no family to back him, he will have no family to follow him. He does not marry one of the Schoolmistresses who, by his own admission, would readily accept him (395). In fact, he could not marry. Sexuality itself is irrelevant, since his impotence overwhelms all else.
Because of this, it is not a sexual struggle that exists between Wrayburn and Headstone, but a deeply personal and social struggle. Bradley Headstone’s mania for social acceptance precedes his meeting with Wrayburn. Wrayburn represents upper class Society in Headstone’s eyes. The passive dismissal or rejection by Wrayburn therefore signifies the dismissal of Society. In his assurance that “I don’t think about you,” Eugene Wrayburn mocks Headstone with his unconcern for the schoolmaster’s name (289-291). Headstone is nameless in the estimation of Society – he is not worth a consideration or thought. Wrayburn sarcastically calls him “Schoolmaster,” and then undermines the nickname when he deems Headstone “rather too passionate for a good schoolmaster” (292). Headstone feels the full force of Wrayburn’s cuts, interpreting them as reproaches for his obscure class origin. Eugene denies and dismisses such an accusation when he notes dryly, “I know nothing concerning it, Schoolmaster, and seek to know nothing” (293). The men are on two sides of a class divide. At the same time, the implications of their relationship are even more complex, going beyond simple social stratification.
At a certain level, both Eugene Wrayburn and Bradley Headstone exist as social outcasts. Wrayburn enters the novel bored with London Society – Dickens’ demonized concept of pseudo-community. Unlike many other Dickensian heroes who escape from the tawdry falseness of Society by turning to community or family, Wrayburn rejects his family as well. He considers his father part of Society, and therefore has no sense of community upon which to rely. Headstone likewise is an outsider. He is not only beyond the ranks of upper class Society; he is virtually alone in the world, without family, burdened by an obscure origin. These two men, approaching from opposite ends of a social spectrum, face the same quandary – the need to find a niche, and to create a sense of community to combat solitude. In time, Wrayburn is successful in this, but Headstone fails abysmally. One becomes a hero suitably united with a heroine, the other a murderer, damned to exile. These contrasting trajectories interact throughout the novel.
For Headstone, Eugene is the “image that mirrors his lack,” both socially and personally (Morris 134). Headstone’s struggle for control is addressed several times in the novel. During his earliest conversation with Eugene, Headstone speaks to himself, exposing the psychological torments within him that are seemingly schizophrenic:
'Oh, what a misfortune is mine,' cried Bradley, breaking off to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he
shook from head to food, 'that I cannot so control myself as to appear a stronger creature than this, when a
man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt in a day can so command himself!' He said it in a very agony,
and even followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn himself (292 emphasis added).
Headstone is, indeed, torn. His identity is shredded and gradually destroyed in the course of the novel. Headstone is appalled and overwhelmed by his own lack of control when confronted by Eugene. Headstone’s lack of control is thrown into sharp relief when compared with Eugene’s complete composure (Morris 134). Eugene never loses his cool even when he is being stalked by the increasingly mad Headstone.
Despite this descent and the mocking contrast of Eugene, Headstone constantly seeks to keep up the illusion of self-control and individuality. In his perversely violent proposal scene he assures Lizzie Hexam, “I can restrain myself, and I will” (396). The obvious fallacy of this statement later causes Lizzie, in her fright, to consider calling for help. He replies that it is he “who should call for help” adding that Lizzie cannot “know how much I need it” (398). One moment he assures Lizzie he is calm, and in the next moment, he is overwhelmed by “wild energy” that “was absolutely terrifying” (396). Even in his declaration of love, he strives to assert himself as an individual of some significance. He knows who he is – he obsessively dwells on aspects of his own character that include his obscure origins, his skills, and his academic status – perhaps better than Eugene, who wallows in confusion of self. Headstone does not, however, know how he himself fits in society, and rather fancies that he doesn’t. In an effort to construct himself, he actively defines himself against society:
You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I
cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted
in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me
to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you
could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you
would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good—every
good—with equal force (397).
He seeks to be distinct – his meaning is different from “other men.” At the same time, he puts an excessive store by Lizzie as the only possible means of his salvation. He throws away all other options, in an almost suicidal effort. Community bears no meaning for him. Such singleness of purpose is charted for failure. He can have no legitimate hope with Lizzie, and even were he successful, his belief that he would be drawn “to any good—every good” is spurious and unlikely. Here again he seeks to endorse the idea that, were it not for Lizzie and Wrayburn, he could have avoided this descent. As Johnson emphatically insists, such would be utterly unlikely (1042). The intensity and depth of Headstone’s emotions would undermine any sort of social normalcy even without situational provocation. With that provocation, no real social salvation can be gained for Headstone. His handicap lies both in the extreme nature of his emotions and his characteristic impotence. He tells Lizzie that he is “in thorough earnest, dreadful earnest” (397). He cannot bend or yield or moderate his fury, despite his assurances, for his fury is dreadfully earnest. When Lizzie refuses him this becomes blatantly evident.
The intensity of Headstone’s jealousy has been likened by many critics to Dickens’ own experience (Carey 27). It is a notably serious portrayal of jealousy, contrasting Dickens’ frequent comedic use of the emotion in other novels (Johnson 1039-40). Dickens’ relationship with his mistress Ellen Ternan, is a potential basis for such a change of tone (Carey 27). A direct correlation of biographical experience and character development could lead to empathetic narration. The difficulty for Headstone is that he is not merely a violently jealous man. His earnestness is not, in fact, truly aimed at Lizzie. It is a symptom of that larger social obsession that drives Headstone throughout the novel. He accepts her rejection with startling violence:
'Then,' said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her, and bringing his clenched hand down upon the
stone with a force that laid the knuckles raw and bleeding; ‘then I hope that I may never kill him' (398).
Such is the first vocalization of Headstone’s murderous intent. For him, the rejection by Lizzie is in fact representative of Wrayburn’s snub. Wrayburn is the demon who is riding and will ride the Schoolmaster, and is therefore the single object of Headstone’s hatred. Lizzie herself appears marginal beside Wrayburn. The burning issue in the heart of Headstone is that his self respect “lies under that fellow’s feet, and he treads upon it and exults above it” (400):
With Mr. Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I went on. With Mr. Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I spoke to you just
now. With Mr. Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I have been set aside and I have been cast out (399).
The perversity of this obsession and the oddity of this scene cannot be exaggerated. As he struggles with self control, Headstone grips himself – the headstone of a grave. As a character notes late in the novel: “Headstone! Why, that’s in a churchyard” (793). When Headstone’s struggle reaches a pitch he strikes himself violently, engaging in a sort of sadistic self-flagellation.
Although the desperation of Headstone at this juncture is owed largely to his own conjectures concerning Lizzie and Wrayburn, subsequent chapters justify his suspicions. It is during these chapters that the contrasting opinion of Dickens becomes more evident. There is no real sympathy wasted upon the murderer. Dickens probes the depths of Headstone with an intensity and focus that is almost as obsessive as Headstone himself. His primary instrument in doing so is Eugene Wrayburn. As Wrayburn admits to his friend Mortimer Lightwood:
I goad the schoolmaster to madness. I make the schoolmaster so ridiculous, and so aware of being made
ridiculous, that I see him chafe and fret at every pore when we cross one another [….] I have derived
inexpressible comfort from it (542).
At this point in the novel, Lizzie Hexam has run away, and is therefore removed from the Headstone-Wrayburn equation. Only the two men oppose each other, and it is now that the true motivation of Headstone’s insanity is revealed. Eugene “goads” him by making him “ridiculous,” by exposing his social impotence (542). Composure gives Eugene clarity of mind, and even a sort of carte blanche. Because he is calm, his cruel treatment of Headstone, although unjust, is accepted by Dickens. It is his duty, as a function of the novel, to act as a clear-headed demon riding Headstone. Headstone, condemned as a vile murderer because of his deliberate intent to kill, is unequivocally established as the villain of the piece.
Eugene’s honest recognition of Headstone’s disorder is problematical. When he admits to Mortimer Lightwood that he deliberately goads the Schoolmaster to madness, he does not directly state the degree to which Headstone is mad. The omniscient narrator, however, is aware just as Eugene is aware:
The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it. More; he irritated it, with a kind of perverse pleasure akin
to that which a sick man sometimes has in irritating a wound upon his body (546).
The paradox of Eugene is that, despite Headstone’s attribution of clarity, composure, and control to him, Eugene is confused and uncertain. He does not know whether or not he loves Lizzie Hexam. He does know, however, that he takes a sick pleasure in torturing Headstone. His life has been defined by his lack of energy. Despite this characteristic passivity, Eugene insists that, given “something really worth being energetic about,” he would be intensely focused (20). He finds this something in the active hounding of Headstone. The imperfect nature of Eugene attests once again to the situation of Everyman. Had he been driven down a different path, Eugene could have committed a murder. In the end, however, Eugene does not even consider such an action, and that is the crucial difference between the two men. Eugene is not unequivocally a hero, but he is not a murderer. He requires redemption – redemption that ironically comes by the hand of the man who despises him. Until that time, however, Eugene presses cruelly upon Headstone, driving him further and further into madness.
Such a hounding of Headstone should form him into a sympathetic character. As noted above, Eugene too might have been the murderer. Headstone is a victim in a sense – driven by Wrayburn, events beyond his control, depths beyond his control, and Dickens himself. His situation is compared to that of “the miserable creatures of the much-lamented times, who accused themselves of impossibilities under a contagion of horror and the strongly suggestive influences of Torture” (555). At the same time, the torture under which Headstone suffers is not exclusively instigated by Wrayburn. These evil spirits reside within Headstone, inspiring horrors:
If a record of the sport had usurped the places of peaceful texts from Scripture on the wall, the most advanced
of the scholars might have taken fright and run away from the master (555).
Headstone is betrayed by his own interior struggles. Not only is he too passionate for a schoolmaster, he is too haunted. It is completely inappropriate for him to be the victim of Evil Spirits. It is thus inappropriate for him to be a schoolmaster. His lack of control has destroyed his own identity. Such destruction alienates Headstone from humanity as a whole. In this way, a sympathetic Everyman perspective is completely overshadowed by a theory that staunchly refuses to forgive a murderer.
When Everyman steps out of the picture, the descent of Headstone becomes unavoidable. As he becomes more maniacal, Headstone becomes a more distinctive and memorable character. Ironically, at the same time he is destroying himself and erasing his character in a very specific way:
Looking like the hunted, and not the hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of deferred hope and
consuming hate and anger in his face, white-lipped, wild-eyed, draggle-haired, seamed with jealousy and
anger, and torturing himself with the conviction that he showed it all and they exulted in it, he went by them in
the dark, like a haggard head suspended in the air: so completely did the force of his expression cancel his
figure (544).
He sets himself up to be the hunter, but, in the end, becomes the hunted. He is unable to conceal his emotions, and the “expression” of his face cancels “his figure” (544). His lack of control is further aggravated by his awareness that Eugene recognizes his disorder. Many influences press upon him, but it is Headstone who is “torturing himself” (544). Headstone is tearing himself into fragments, alienating his identity, and moving towards social suicide. This division of selves reaches a new pitch with the entrance of Rogue Riderhood. Headstone’s self splits in a manner that appears schizophrenic. As Dr. Lauriat Lane defines him, Riderhood is yet another double in the mix (47-55). He is a double, however, that is consciously chosen by Headstone. As Headstone plots to murder Wrayburn, he chooses Riderhood, a self-defined “Waterside character,” to be his scapegoat (150):
Truly, Bradley Headstone had taken careful note of the honest man’s dress in the course of that night-walk
they had together. He must have committed it to memory, and slowly got it by heart. It was exactly reproduced
in the dress he now wore (631).
Headstone attempts to steal Riderhood’s identity in the days before the murder. He is seeking to pass off his guilt before he actively incurs it. Headstone’s failure in these plans and traps is typical:
And whereas, in his own schoolmaster clothes, he usually looked as if they were the clothes of some other
man, he now looked, in the clothes of some other man, or men, as if they were his own (631).
His preparations for murder fail as dismally as the murder itself. Headstone’s sinister efforts only emphasize his characteristic problem. He is a socially impotent outcast even before the murder. He does not fit into his own clothes, and appears correct in the clothing of another. His awkwardness as an outsider is strikingly pronounced as he endeavors to create a false identity. Headstone’s actions only deepen the divide between himself and community.
The murder of Eugene Wrayburn is a striking, dramatic scene which, for all of its violence, is a fascinating and beautiful passage. Suspense is bound in every aspect of the scene. It opens with a panoramic view of the natural scenery, “where the sky appeared to meet the earth, as if there were no immensity of space between mankind and Heaven” (689). The setting of the scene places the action on a quasi-Divine scale. It is a Dickensian humanist view of social action – mankind and Heaven are merged, and a sin against one is a sin against the other.
Nature plays a powerful part in this scene, as it both gives expressive foreshadowing of the imminent attack, and also reflects the intense interior struggle of Wrayburn. In his wanderings, the “rippling of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in his uneasy reflections” (698). Wrayburn is on the brink of moral crisis, vacillating between his love for Lizzie and his disinclination to marry her. Everything about him prefigures the assault that will occur in mere moments. The “bell” that rings moral warnings in his mind sounds “like a knell” (697). At the same time, Wrayburn is almost perversely unaware of the danger around him. He even physically runs against Headstone:
Turning suddenly, he met a man, so close upon him that Eugene, surprised, stepped back, to avoid a
collision. The man carried something over his shoulder which might have been a broken oar, or spar, or bar,
and took no notice of him, but passed on.
'Halloa, friend!' said Eugene, calling after him, 'are you blind?'
The man made no reply, but went his way (697).
Eugene moral quandary and physical danger merge when Wrayburn, with an uncanny twist that feeds the drama of the scene, cues the attack:
'Out of the question to marry her,' said Eugene, 'and out of the question to leave her. The crisis!'
He had sauntered far enough. Before turning to retrace his steps he stopped upon the margin, to look
down at the night. In an instant, with a dreadful crash, the reflected night turned crooked, flames shot jaggedly
across the air, and the moon and stars came bursting from the sky.
Was he struck by lightening? With some incoherent half-formed thought to that effect, he turned under
the blows that were blinding him and mashing his life, and closed with a murderer, whom he caught be a red
neckerchief—unless the raining down of his own blood gave it that hue.
Eugene was light, active, and expert; but his arms were broken, or he was paralysed, and could do not
more than hang on to the man, with his head swung back, so that he could see nothing but the heaving sky.
After dragging at the assailant, he fell on the bank with him, and then there was another great crash, and then
a splash, and all was done (698).
At this moment, Headstone passes entirely from the scene. Lizzie hears the noise of the confrontation, and, without knowing the victim, happens on the scene only a moment after the attack. She follows the trail of blood across the bank and beyond the water’s edge to see “a bloody face turned up towards the moon, and drifting away” (699). The victim looks upward, indicative of his redemption. In the case of Eugene, however, this redemption is not exclusively spiritual. When she retrieves his body and recognizes him, Lizzie looked to Heaven and “blessed him and forgave him, “if she had anything to forgive” (699). The forgiveness is complete, for with Lizzie comes the forgiving hand of Providence. The crisis is survived by Eugene, and the promise of temporal and eternal salvation is before him. As the critic Houston puts it, “Wrayburn is violently struck down and reborn in the very slime and ooze that precludes Lizzie from marrying him and being accepted by Society (174). This violent act completely knocks down barriers of class, alienates Wrayburn from Society, and makes community possible.
Considered as Eugene’s scene, the chapter is artful and complete. Even so, the presentation of the murder scene as a study of Wrayburn before and during the attack, and of Lizzie afterwards, begs an obvious question – why, after chapters of intense examination of the murderously intent mind of Headstone do we not witness this scene from his perspective? This narrative choice emphasizes three important aspects of Headstone’s character at this juncture: his loss of identity; his inability to be saved; and his characteristic failure to execute intention properly.
Headstone’s loss of identity is clear. Not only is the focus shifted to the thoughts and actions of Wrayburn and Lizzie, but Headstone is reduced to being “a man” with “something over his shoulder” (697). His subjectivity is completely abolished in this scene. The fact that Headstone “took no notice” of Wrayburn may be a touch of poetic justice – earlier Wrayburn assured Headstone that he did not think of him at all, now Headstone actively refuses to think of Wrayburn (697). It is more likely, however, that Headstone does not take notice of Wrayburn because he is not a conscious actor in this scene. Ironically referred to as “a murderer” and “the assailant” during the actual attack, Headstone is like a specter, or robot, that appears on the stage to fulfill a function of plot for the sake of heroic development (698). This is Wrayburn’s moment of crisis, not Headstone’s. If witnessed outside of the context of the book, the preceding and subsequent Headstone passages would hardly be anticipated based on the tone of this scene.
Eugene’s exclamation, “Halloa, friend! […] are you blind?” is deeply ironic. Not only does it poignantly reflect his own blindness to danger, but it also accurately diagnoses the schoolmaster’s situation. Headstone’s rage at this point has made him mentally blind. He cannot be saved at this point in the novel, because he has moved beyond salvation. There can be no mental or emotional development on his part. This is why the narrative of the murder is not presented in his mind, but Wrayburn’s. For Headstone, who frequently fails to accomplish his intents, intention is everything. Headstone’s intention is murder, and he is already damned. Despite Dickens’ assurances that the murderer is Everyman, Headstone as murderer has become no man. His identity has been completely and irrevocable lost. At the same time, luckily for Eugene, the overwhelming impotence of Headstone’s character marks his murder for failure from the outset. He must act, and he does act, but he cannot and does not accomplish his aim.
This last fact is itself paradoxical. The murder has been anticipated before it actually occurs. Headstone raves at one point that when the men Wrayburn “has wronged, and on whom he has bestowed his insolence, are getting ready to be hanged, there is a death-bell ringing. And not for them” (632). Headstone thus predicts not only the attack upon Wrayburn, but also his own social suicide. In fact, his social suicide, the unintended consequences of murder, is quite successful. The murder fails dismally. This again emphasizes the fact that action is irrelevant for Headstone. The murder scene itself is unimportant in deciding his personal moral or social fate. This scene merely reemphasizes the descent and destruction of Headstone. He sought physically to deface Eugene by beating him, raining blows upon his face that “were blinding him and mashing his life” (698). Yet it is this bloody face that stands as a beacon for Lizzie to find, retrieve, and save Wrayburn. This attempt is completely counterproductive, continuing the destruction of Headstone’s own identity. The nature of physical beating makes the failure all the more distinctively Headstone’s – he cannot, for example, blame his failure upon the misfiring of a gun. He provides the force, and, although he uses “something over his shoulder” to attack Wrayburn, it is an attack by his own two hands. The full force of guilt and of failure is upon him.
This is the moment at which the characters of Wrayburn and Headstone, thus far closely linked, begin to move apart, leaving Headstone as a solitary outcast. Even Eugene’s less than admirable characteristics – such as the cruel goading of Headstone and his willingness to compromise Lizzie Hexam – are redeemed by violence. Hope has been gained for Eugene, but hope has been lost for Headstone. Chapter VII of Part IV deals with the immediate aftermath of the murder and is fittingly titled: “Better to be Abel than Cain.” Headstone has murdered, albeit unsuccessfully, his social “brother,” and now he bears the curse and the mark of Cain. He is an alien, and society recoils from him in horror.
Society here finds representation in Charlie Hexam. Revealing the concrete reality of the curse upon Headstone, Hexam emphatically denounces and casts out the schoolmaster. Headstone has truly become “Cain” – branded as a murderer, and an outcast from humanity. The rejection of Charlie is only a symptom of an overall condition, but even this small example affects Headstone deeply:
The wretched creature seemed to suffer acutely under this renunciation. A desolate air of utter and complete
loneliness fell upon him, like a visible shade... he drooped his devoted head when the boy was gone, and
shrank together on the floor, and groveled there, with the palms of his hands tight-clasping his hot temples, in
unutterable agony, and unrelieved by a single tear (710; 713).
Such agony is intensified by his own awareness of his failure. Headstone’s desire had been to separate Lizzie Hexam and Eugene Wrayburn, and yet he had united them. He is overwhelmed by the knowledge that “he had dipped his hands in blood, to mark himself a miserable fool and tool” (791).
He thought of Fate, or Providence, or be the directing Power what it might, as having put a fraud upon him—
overreached him—and in his impotent mad rage bit, and tore, and had his fit (791-2).
Bradley blames a higher power for his failure, but his own “impotent mad rage” destroys him, nothing else (792). Headstone as Everyman shares the potential of salvation, but likewise bears personal responsibility for damnation. His responsibility becomes even more definite in the aftermath of this despairing scene. Despite implacable condemnation of the murderer, one last chance for salvation is granted to Headstone. Eugene Wrayburn, lying in his deathbed, extends the hand of forgiveness to Headstone by refusing to press charges against him. This offering of community is fully rejected by Headstone. He would “far rather have been seized for his murder, than […] knowing himself spared, and knowing why” (792). Living community moves further and further from Headstone’s reach. Headstone’s situation in the rest of the novel is that of decay. It does not matter than he has not actually accomplished his goal. In a life undermined by impotence, Headstone’s intention is everything, and repentance is beyond his reach. He does experience regret, but it is only regret at his failure to have done the thing properly. He is overwhelmed by his sin, even as he seeks desperately to hide it, passing his guilt off onto Rogue Riderhood.
It is now that Dickens turns from Headstone rolling on the floor in the gloom of his fallen state to the image of Rogue Riderhood who has successfully fished up the evidence Headstone sought to conceal in the river (713). Unknown to Headstone, Riderhood has been observing him for some time. He is aware of Headstone’s plan to incriminate him, and prepares. Headstone’s plot to incriminate Riderhood is as transparent as it is complex. It is a cruel irony that Riderhood knows exactly what Headstone is about, while Headstone does not even know that he has failed both in the murder and in his efforts to cast blame elsewhere (704-8).
Bradley was suspicious of every sound he heard, and of every face he saw, but was under a spell which very
commonly falls upon the shedder of blood, and had no suspicion of the real danger that lurked in his life, and
would have it yet (708).
Dickens deems it a common spell that is a murderer’s lot. The violence of the act of murder severs the murderer from humanity, and drives away stability, control, and clarity. The blindness that came upon him in the murder scene is permanently fixed. Headstone does not even realize that Riderhood is standing over him, watching, comprehending, and forming a counter plot.
Riderhood replaces Wrayburn as foil to Headstone. It is a fitting match, for Riderhood himself is outside the community. He is, indeed, altogether outside the ranks of the living. In the course of the novel, Riderhood drowns in the Thames. During a dramatic scene of rescue, when Riderhood’s life has been despaired of, he unexpectedly returns from the dead (445). Wrayburn and Riderhood are both outcasts to match the outcast status of Headstone – the difference is that Riderhood’s exile is more unalterable and deadly.
The murder ill-accomplished, Headstone seeks to slip back into the shell of his social niche. Riderhood, having pieced together the pathetic charade constructed by Headstone, appears in Headstone’s school. In an ironic twist, Riderhood assumes the schoolmaster persona of Headstone to expose the crime. Riderhood issues his confrontation to Headstone in a series of questions to the students, thereby stealing Headstone’s identity as “Schoolmaster.” Headstone is not only incapable of passing his guilt off to Riderhood – he is also incapable of retaining or controlling himself. His distress in this scene is evident, just as it is evident that Riderhood is completely in control. At Riderhood’s direction, Headstone writes his own name upon the chalkboard, ending his pathetic attempt at anonymity. When Riderhood intimates threateningly that he is aware of Headstone’s plot, the schoolmaster turns “his face to the black board and slowly wiped his name out” (795). He thus acknowledges the loss of his own identity, and submits to the authority of Riderhood.
The final, private confrontation of Riderhood and Headstone takes the place of capital punishment. Headstone is a dead man. Society has rejected and condemned the murderer, and now he must face punishment. Riderhood appears as a perverse version of Divine Justice, that smites the table and threatens to “bring my hand down upon you will all its weight […] and smash you” (797). He does not seek to punish Headstone for the attempted murder of Wrayburn – in fact, he declares that he does not “care a curse for the T’other governor, alive or dead” (798). The crime he is intent on punishing is Headstone’s endeavor to steal his identity and incriminate him. His punishment is the formulaic threat of blackmail, but with deeper implications. Riderhood intends to control the life that Headstone cannot control. Riderhood even suggests that Headstone marry a certain schoolmistress and use her money to pay the blackmail. Headstone’s social impotence makes such an action impossible. At the same time, the threat of losing his control, which he has in fact already lost, seals the fate of Bradley Headstone.
The decaying of Headstone is now physically manifested. Headstone sits at the table without moving or speaking for the rest of the night. As he sits, “rigid before the fire,” he undergoes a strange period of decomposition. He ages, “with the dark lines deepening in his face, its stare becoming more and more haggard, its surface turning whiter and whiter as if it were being overspread with ashes, and the very texture and colour of his hair degenerating” (800). In the morning, “this decaying statue” rises from the table, like a condemned man rising after a sentence has been read (800). Headstone leaves Lock-house, and paces back and forth for miles outside with Riderhood following closely behind him. Headstone is like a prisoner in a cell, measuring the space of his confinement with his stride, and awaiting execution. His prison is not defined by walls, but by Riderhood, and “the scene was a mere white and yellow desert” (801). Exiled as he is from humanity, Headstone is suffering in a desert, seemingly unable to escape the curse that is upon him. He is as Cain, with a punishment “greater than I can bear” (Genesis 4:13). Like Cain, he is marked, and no man can kill him. He is exempt from the punishing hand of the law, even as he is exiled from humanity. His loneliness has reached its extreme pitch, paradoxical as it is with the shadow of Riderhood doggedly beside him.
The two characters are finally merged, and with deadly earnest. Although Riderhood “can never be drowned” because he has already “come through drowning,” Bradley can drown, and does drown, taking Riderhood with him. As they are merged, the potential of Bradley overcomes the lack in Riderhood. Riderhood’s hold over Bradley is overpowered by the physical hold of his nemesis, who swears he will “hold you living, and I’ll hold you dead” (802). Unlike that of Eugene, their faces do not look upward, but plummet into the depths. These men are lost, just as Headstone has been lost since he formed the intention to kill Eugene Wrayburn. Finally, the union of Headstone and Riderhood in death is a desperate psychological effort to recreate a sense of community. Headstone has been devastated by the loss of friends, and even social identity in the course of the novel. His attempted murder branded him with the mark of Cain – an outcast upon whom no man may lay a hand. He is as damned in life as he must be in death, and such damnation brings with it utter and complete loneliness. Such solitude is beyond Headstone’s ability to bear.
Riderhood went over into the smooth pit backward, and Bradley Headstone upon him. When the two were
found, lying under the ooze and scum behind one of the rotting gates, Riderhood’s hold had relaxed, probably
in falling, and his eyes were staring upward. But he was girded still with Bradley’s iron ring, and the rivets of
the iron ring held tight (802).
This perverse union, that has been interpreted by some critics as having further intimations of homoeroticism, is a futile grasping at intimacy. They are left together in the ooze, scum, and rotting that will complete the decomposition already begun in Headstone. The two dead men become really and actually dead. Riderhood’s “hold” over Headstone relaxes as his will cannot last beyond death. In contrast, the will, or intent, of Headstone is finally executed successfully. The iron ring binds Riderhood just as Headstone would seek to bind some companionship into the grave, and even into hell.
Charles Dickens’ two contending theories of the murderer merge within Bradley Headstone. Headstone’s status as Everyman makes him susceptible to murderous temptation that, when yielded to, alienates him from humanity. In his exile, he is no longer Everyman, but the solitary “shedder of blood” (708). As such, Headstone is a monster of vice, undeserving of human sympathy (Collins 254). At the same time, Headstone maintains a certain incongruity. His first appearance, with its underlying uncertainty, suggests that there was always something unsettled within him (qtd. Collins 279; Dickens 396). Events of the novel provoke pity for the Schoolmaster: the cruelty of Wrayburn’s hounding, Headstone’s constant failure, and the poignant despair of his death. In the end, however, the violent severance of social bonds is decisive. The blood of Headstone’s social brother cries out from the ground. The mark of Cain, or Dickens’ distaste for capital punishment, saves Headstone from social justice and damns him to exile. Desperate in his isolation, he grasps at false community with Riderhood. To escape the depths within his own soul, the Schoolmaster casts himself into the deeper chasm of death. Descending into social nothingness, Bradley Headstone becomes No Man.
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