Lizzie Hexam

Lizzie Hexam
Lizzie Hexam, the respectable daughter of Jesse "Gaffer" Hexam and older sister of Charley Hexam, functions as one of the novel's moral centers. She is a modest, courteous, self-sacrificing girl, who stays true to her father because she knows he needs her. She acts as both a daughter and domestic partner to Gaffer and as a mother to Charley. Unlike most characters in the book, Lizzie understands her condition as a member of the lower class and accepts it. She's very interested in learning to read and write, but knows that if she does so it will divide her from her father, so for the first half of the novel, she remains uneducated.

Uneducated as she is, Lizzie is characterized as having an innate and mystical sort of intuition that is comparable only to characters like Mrs. Boffin. Early in the novel, Lizzie is depicted in domestic scenes, "reading" and "studying" the past, present, and future in the fire. It is in this fortune-telling practice that she has visions of her brother's scholastic success. It is arguable that Dickens values this type of mystical literacy over that of formal education.

In the second half of the novel, after her father has passed away, Eugene Wrayburn begins to take an interest in Lizzie in spite of their obvious class differences. He convinces her to allow him to finance her and Jenny Wren's private education, and thus she learns to read and write.

Chapter III
"'I was all in a tremble of another sort when you owned to father you could write a little'" (36). "'Give us a touch of the fortune-telling pictures about me.' ... 'There are you, Charley, working your way, in secret from father, at the school; and you get prizes; and you go on better and better; and you come to be a -- what was it you called it when you told me about that?' ... 'Pupil-teacher.' ... 'You come to be a pupil-teacher, and you still go on better and better, and you rise to be a master full of learning and respect. But the secret has come to father's knowledge long before, and it has divided you from father, and from me.'" (38) "'I should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my want of learning very much, Charley. But I should feel it much more, if I didn't know it to be a tie between me and faher. -- Hark! Father's tread!'" (39).
 * Lizzie is telling her brother Charley that she was nervous that Charley revealed to Gaffer that he could write, as they both understand their father's deep-seated distaste for education.
 * This episode is the first to feature Lizzie in her mystic, fortune-telling role, which can be viewed as a sort of alternative type of mystical literacy that is arguably more valuable than that offered by formal education. She "reads" her brother's future in the fire, and audiences find that her vision is fulfilled later on in the novel. Charley does indeed become a pupil-teacher to Bradley Headstone, and he does indeed get disowned for his father and later disowns his sister.
 * Lizzie admits to Charley that she would also like to learn how to read, but knows that if she does so she will be disowned by her father because he needs her to help him with the boat.