ABSTRACT
Lizzie likewise finds her sanitary salvation on the river that had threatened to be her ruin. Working in the paper mill by the Thames, she is able to keep faith with her past without risking the corruption associated with the urban river. Inspired by the transformative power of the paper mill, Dickens offers a sanitary fantasy. He imagines the Thames-side village as a place where purity is inviolate and whatever is sullied is made clean again. Thus, even when the men whom Lizzie seeks to escape follow her upstream, she is protected; the clear river stands as the outward sign of her moral innocence. In what she hopes is a parting interview with Eugene on the river’s banks, something of Lizzie’s inner purity is revealed to her pursuer: “He held her, almost as if she were sanctified to him by death, and kissed her, once, almost as he might have kissed the dead” (764). Lizzie’s “death” here is significant because it reflects her purity, understood as sexual innocence, and saves her from sexual victimiza tion. Of course, the disturbing suggestion remains: the only way a woman can be truly pure is to be dead.
