Eugene Wrayburn and Bradley Headstone PART THE FIRST

Ah. Hello. I've been writing this for a while now, and basically it's not even done yet. But I promised to put it up this week-or part of it, and here is roughly the first half.

I would like to thank everyone who I talked about these characters with, but especially Greer, Oliver, and Brewer, because they play these fantastic characters and it's so interesting to see what they come up with.

It has been extremely interesting these past weekends to see the result of some buildup in farther past weekends relating to the topic of certain persons Eugene Wrayburn and Bradley Headstone. The general opinion seems to be all in favor of Bradley! Why is this? While I acknowledge that he is an incredibly interesting and quite sympathetic character, and very deserving of all the love, I have not been able to fully understand why Eugene is so disliked, and I also have been confused as to why people are comparing them. Simply because persons are involved in a love triangle does not mean that is the defining part of their character.

While I confess myself strongly bias towards Lizzie and Eugene on the love triangle level, I regard Eugene and Bradley as equally interesting on a character level. And so, if you do not all mind reading a little analytical rambling of character on my part, I would like to ramble a bit about both of them.

One may argue that one of the points of Bradley Headstone is to make, through comparison, Eugene more favorable as a match for Lizzie. This may work in some places, but as demonstrated by the strong bias towards Bradley Headstone at YSP, that is not really working here.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I am not fond of love triangles, they always seem to make someone unhappy or dead (or in Bradley’s case, both, so I was not incredibly pleased to see one developing on my first read-through of Our Mutual Friend. Eugene or Bradley was going to end up unhappy (or dead), and that’s just a depressing thought to be reading with. At this point I considered Eugene amusingly aloof and dismissive (but actually, I thought Mortimer was even more so), and Bradley was just a guy who repressed his emotions WAY TOO MUCH for it to be healthy. So they weren’t great-but not that bad either.

AND ON REFLECTION

BRADLEY HEADSTONE

Bradley Headstone is many things. Object of romantic interest to Miss Peecher. Romantic pursuer of Lizzie Hexam. Stalker of Eugene Wrayburn. Schoolmaster to Charley Hexam. Schoolmaster in general. Conflicted. Confused. Man of repressed emotions. Passionate. Obsessive. And possibly just a little crazy. But that is up to you.

When you first meet Bradley Headstone you are given a brief glimpse into his ‘normal’ persona. I say brief, because pretty much as soon as you meet him, he meets Lizzie and then, sadly, it is all downhill from there. He is decent, constrained, and from the beginning it is hinted that there is something lurking beneath.

Bradley Headstone, for all his tragic character and somewhat sympathetic villainry, is not exactly a good man. He is briefly shown as in control of his life, but changes to being ruled by his passions very quickly. While love can be a redeeming passion, hate is not really regarded as such.

So he falls madly (literally!) in love with Lizzie and starts to pursue her, and rather abandons his stable life for the passions of the heart. His love for Lizzie leads him to develop a very deep hate for Eugene Wrayburn, very fast, and for very little cause. Raging jealousy, hate, and love are often a bad combination.

What did Eugene do? His air-his speech-his condescending aloof and disinterested laziness seem to affect Bradley almost immediately. Admittedly, he is not very nice to Bradley Headstone either, but is that really enough to justify murderous hate? But more about Eugene later.

I find it important, when talking about Bradley Headstone, to mention his proposal to Lizzie. On his part it seems desperate and sympathetic, a man who is madly in love attempting to win over object of said love. However, what is it to Lizzie?

Take the location, for instance. A graveyard. Consider his name. Headstone. While you roll your eyes and go ‘Oh, that Charles Dickens!’ and also thank the various worshipped heavenly powers that his name wasn’t Deadstone, also consider that if you were being proposed to-would you want to be proposed to in a graveyard? At night? I will not add ‘from a man whose name is Headstone?’ because the name really isn’t his fault, poor man.

However, the whole ordeal mostly freaks Lizzie out. I cannot blame her because it is just not a position that any young woman wants to find herself in, at night especially. She refuses his proposal of marriage, and then he fixates on Eugene as the causer of all his problems. He cannot blame Lizzie for this-he blames Eugene. For everything. And Lizzie realizes this and gets even more frightened because she actually kinda likes Eugene. Bradley retreats with some dignity left (actually he makes a pretty good exit, considering the way things went) and actually doesn’t really ever bother her again, except to attempt to kill Eugene, but that’s an indirect bother.

Eugene, on the other hand, is a different story. He is now the object of an obsession for Bradley Headstone-he is the reason that Lizzie refused him, and after all, Bradley was in love with her, so yeah, Jealousy and all that fun stuff. Good thing there wasn’t a Iago around, eh?

As the story continues, Bradley gets more and more unhinged. However, soon, a very notable Bradley and Eugene interaction takes place.

THE BAITING OF BRADLEY HEADSTONE

The big all-caps title was probably unnecessary. However, it sounded cool and ominous.

In all honesty, and I will talk about this later, this is not exactly Eugene’s shining act of humanity. And as the line between the two in terms of ethics becomes blurred-by this time both of them are doing strange, selfish things, or at least planning to do strange, selfish things. And while it is very entertaining to picture Eugene running around town, stalked by Bradley, and taking all the silliest and odd routes just to irritate and further infuriate Bradley, it just doesn’t click with the moral evaluators. So really, this is where Bradley is portrayed as quite a victim. Provoked by Eugene’s amused…provoking, he starts to really go crazy. As long as we note that he started following Eugene, which prompted Eugene to bait him, we can continue. (Also interesting is that it is implied that Charley too takes part in this follow-the-Eugene game from time to time. In fact, in my copy of OMF, which I found in a used bookstore, the lines of Eugene describing his followers are underlined, and beneath is written ‘headstone&charley’).

You may all glare at Eugene now, so we can get back to Bradley.

Bradley is murderous. And angry. And wrathful. And absolutely bent on following Eugene in the hope that Eugene will lead him to Lizzie. I do, though, wonder if that is just one of the reasons he is following Eugene. After all, when he finally follows Eugene to Lizzie, he doesn’t even bother with her and beats up Eugene instead.

In my humble opinion, throughout the rest of the book, Bradley is strangely enough, a really sympathetic character. Before he proposed to Lizzie, Charley was a very bad influence on him, I think. But then, as things near an end, something happens to make Bradley go completely insane.

And it is ALL CHARLEY’S FAULT.

He’s rejected by the woman he loved. He’s baited and provoked by the man he loathes. And finally, he is ‘cast off’ by Charley Hexam. The horrible part? It’s thanks to Charley that he met Lizzie, and consequently went insane (and then died) because of the events that happened after.

There’s not much else to say. He hangs about with Riderhood, stalks Eugene to Lizzie, and then in a fit of fury, beats him nearly to death and dumps him in the river.

In this murderous act, Bradley has actually imitated the dress and look of Riderhood, probably to lay the blame on him if there should be an investigation. Riderhood is no fool, and notices. He proceeds to attempt to blackmail Bradley, and in a final act of, well, something, Bradley grabs him, they struggle, and then fall to their deaths in the river. It’s pretty much suicide, he knows that if he kills Riderhood, he’ll die too, and that makes Bradley’s death very tragic, and really rather heroic, in a way.

To be continued...