THE LONG AWAITED...

EUGENE WRAYBURN

Ah, Eugene. Enemy of bees everywhere.

Eugene is one of those conundrums of personality who confuse even themselves. The strange, intricate development of his character, and his attempts to figure out what is going on with himself are intriguing, and for much of the book his morals seem slightly…off.

When you first meet Eugene he is a lazy, unmotivated, and altogether an indifferently selfish person. His comments and biting sense of humor were endearing to me as a reader, but I am quite aware that other people have differing opinions on that point, so I will not go too far into that.

Again, as with Bradley, nearly as soon as you meet Eugene, he meets Lizzie. It is interesting that the turning point for their characters is so early on in their respective stories, many authors like to get a long buildup to establish the character before they began to change.

Eugene is very interested in Lizzie. That is probably as far as his emotions get at this point, that of being interested. However, remembering that Eugene is lazy and indifferent, this should probably alert some people’s character development radars. And the fact that he is interested is interesting even to himself. He has a strange way of looking at himself-he is very analytical of his own personality, to a degree, and seems to want to understand why he feels things, especially if they are different than before. But then, he’s lazy and tends to be indifferent if things start to look too confusing.

Not so with Lizzie. In fact, Eugene goes to great lengths to figure out what is going on with his feelings regarding her. He continues to lend help in the form of education and an interest in her affairs and life, to the point that Lizzie is able to fall in love with him. Eugene, however, remains confused and skeptical of himself and his motivations until Lizzie disappears, and then he sort of gets his act together and at least decides to do something. Unfortunately, his morals then begin to be in question.

Eugene has tried to do nice things for Lizzie. He has attempted to be a kind person. Unfortunately, all the things he does are also a little selfish. He wants to have her educated because he likes her-and indeed, there is a strange thing going on with Lizzie’s education. Her father disapproved of it and now the two men interested in her are fighting over who gets to have her indebted to them for education, as if that settled everything.-

Back to Eugene. He is having her educated because he likes her, not because he has strong moral feelings about educating the poor. He is extending the offer to Jenny so as not to be exclusive to Lizzie and therefore seem ungenerous. And he even guilt-trips Lizzie to some extent (especially earlier on) into agreeing with these things. However, it’s a learning process, and he is really trying. to be nice. He’s just not very good at it yet.

After Lizzie is traumatized by her brother and Bradley Headstone, and warns Eugene off (who was coming to walk home with her-how late is this taking place?) he is confused, bemused, and a bit irritated. And then she disappears, triggering a decision on his part, and also throwing his whole character very close to ‘horrible person’ territory.

Eugene is still moody and gloomy, but now with a sort of plan or scheme working in his mind. Considering his unmotivated person at the beginning of the book, this is a huge step in change for his character. He broods over Lizzie’s disappearance, and decides to find her. When trying to cajole Jenny into giving up the address fails, he leaves. Coincidentally, however, he is followed by Mr. Dolls, Jenny’s drunken father who only wants threepennorthsrum and will do anything to get it. Interestingly enough, Eugene wants to find Lizzie and will do anything to find her. This must be fate. Awkward, dangerous fate.

The next part of this storyline is very much concerned with the bribery of Mr. Dolls by Eugene and then the infamous Bradley stalking Eugene plot. Eugene behaves very, very badly. The romantic in people may want to excuse him for what he does here, but his love for Lizzie is not in any way enough to excuse him for this, considering he didn’t HAVE to bribe Mr. Dolls with so much rum, and he didn’t HAVE to torture Bradley Headstone to the brink of insanity. In fact, he found the whole Bradley thing kind of amusing, and while he expresses a little regret about the whole Mr. Dolls deal, he doesn’t really seem to do anything to remedy it. He has Lizzie’s address at the end of it all, and that is enough for him.

This, morally, is a problem. Eugene is not crazy, he does not have Bradley’s excuse. He is not madly in love either, though he’s getting there. None of the usual excuses work here, because Eugene is still in the middle of figuring out his own feelings and consequently while his mind is a grey area, his motivations become a grey area and then bad moral things happen.

Somehow, Eugene is not quite a bad person. But he is a VERY MORALLY QUESTIONABLE one.

The rest of this is pretty simple. He finds Lizzie. He is stalked by Bradley. He and Lizzie have a sort of confrontation in which Lizzie just keeps telling him to GO AWAY and he keeps saying BUT WHY and she finally manages to make him sort of promise to leave her alone (though at this point whether or not he means it is also questionable). He soliloquizes, and just as he is finally getting to the heart of things and maybe going to start to figure things out, he is attacked (BRUTALLY, IN A STROBE LIGHT. IT’S AWESOME). and interrupted in his musings. This might be a good thing for his character, though, because considering his personality, it might have taken him forever to just decide to marry Lizzie and be done with it. (if he ever did, which is also doubtful.) As it happens, the attack and aftermath make him think faster than usual, probably because there is a very good chance that he will die.

It is strange, but in my humble opinion, Eugene’s deathbed choice to marry Lizzie is his moment of heroism. By choosing to marry her he is effectively rejecting society (oh the wonderful ‘Tippins’ speech), and also his respected father, and breaking lots of social rules and in general having a right good time being rebellious and that sort of thing. Not to mention he’s married to his one true love and they’re happy and all that. Also, he isn’t dead. Because she saved him! How cute is that?

Well, it’s NOT cute to Bradley Headstone. But we can thank him for being integral to Eugene and Lizzie’s relationship and the person who basically bashed Eugene into marrying Lizzie. So it all works out in the cause and love and justice or something.

IN CONCLUSION

When I consider Eugene and Bradley in light of these musings, the first thing that comes to mind is not that flattering to either of them. Because, no matter how much you try to ignore it or shove it out of the way, the fact remains that they are both stalkers. Bradley stalks Eugene, who stalks Lizzie. Deadly triangle. Bad news. Someone’s going to end up dead. And someone’s going to end up beat up and nearly dead. And someone’s going to end up very not beat up, very far from death, and happily married way above her station with her one true love.

Eugene and Bradley are really brilliant characters, despite their numerous failings. In fact, these failings make them the more brilliant. And I have written way too much about them, probably, but it was fun, and I promised Greer I’d finish someday, and I hope I didn’t ramble too much (though I did) and I hope that my musings and interpretations at least make some sense to whoever is currently reading this. I also didn't bother to do any tweaking to this, so apologies for grammatical errors.

~Boots