Sunday, February 01, 2004
It was clear from the very beginning of OMF that the river would be almost as important a character as any of the people in the book. The corpse that was believed to be John Harmon’s was found in it, and since that start, everything in the novel has taken place near the river. Book III is no exception, and the flowing water becomes even more important as it provides a tenuous link between the various plots in the book once some of the characters (Betty Higden and Lizzie Hexam) begin to move out of the city. But if the river is a character, who is it? In a literal sense, it is, of course, the Thames, as it is named in the book. The story takes place in and around the real locality of London, and the Thames is the real river that runs there. However, the river in OMF has as much impact on the story as any character, and seems to be much more than a convenient point of geography. It is because of this impact, and because of the type of impact that it is, that I would suggest that a second, unmentioned name for the river exists. The Thames in OMF seems to be the modern descendant of the river Styx.
This seems best supported by the words of the river itself, as imagined by Betty Higden in Book III: “Come to me, come to me! When the cruel shame and terror you have so long fled from, most beset you, come to me! I am the Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance to do my work; I am not held in estimation according as I shirk it. My breast is softer than the pauper-nurses; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the pauper-wards. Come to me!” (497) In Greco-Roman mythology, which Dickens has referenced several times in OMF (the “self-immolating female”, the sacrifice to Hymen on the Wilfer’s anniversary, etc.), the Styx was the river that separated the world of the living from the world of the dead, and the Thames plays the same part in OMF. On one level, it is simply the instrument of death. A dead body was found in the Thames in the first chapter of Book I, and before that book came to an end, Gaffer Hexam had met his fate in a similar way in the river. In Book III, the Thames becomes a conscious agent of death, actively calling out to Betty Higden. The river promises a quiet, peaceful death to her, and an easy transition between worlds. But some characters that enter the river do not die. This is because the Thames also echoes the Styx in being a way to cross between worlds, sometimes with only a symbolic death to mark the journey. John Harmon passes out of his old life, through death in the Thames, and is reborn in his new life as John Rokesmith. Lizzie Hexam, similarly, travels a ways along the Thames and passes from a life which had become unbearably complicated into a new life which is almost too simple. For Lizzie, the river almost seems ready to take on a third name, that of the river Lethe, the source of the waters of forgetfulness.
This seems best supported by the words of the river itself, as imagined by Betty Higden in Book III: “Come to me, come to me! When the cruel shame and terror you have so long fled from, most beset you, come to me! I am the Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance to do my work; I am not held in estimation according as I shirk it. My breast is softer than the pauper-nurses; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the pauper-wards. Come to me!” (497) In Greco-Roman mythology, which Dickens has referenced several times in OMF (the “self-immolating female”, the sacrifice to Hymen on the Wilfer’s anniversary, etc.), the Styx was the river that separated the world of the living from the world of the dead, and the Thames plays the same part in OMF. On one level, it is simply the instrument of death. A dead body was found in the Thames in the first chapter of Book I, and before that book came to an end, Gaffer Hexam had met his fate in a similar way in the river. In Book III, the Thames becomes a conscious agent of death, actively calling out to Betty Higden. The river promises a quiet, peaceful death to her, and an easy transition between worlds. But some characters that enter the river do not die. This is because the Thames also echoes the Styx in being a way to cross between worlds, sometimes with only a symbolic death to mark the journey. John Harmon passes out of his old life, through death in the Thames, and is reborn in his new life as John Rokesmith. Lizzie Hexam, similarly, travels a ways along the Thames and passes from a life which had become unbearably complicated into a new life which is almost too simple. For Lizzie, the river almost seems ready to take on a third name, that of the river Lethe, the source of the waters of forgetfulness.
