Whilst looking at the opening to Our mutual friend a student asked why gaffer hexman’s vulture-like identity is only hinted at rather than told:
The girl turned her face towards him with a start, and rowed in silence. Her face was very pale. He was a hook-nosed man, and with that and his bright eyes and his ruffled head, bore a certain likeness to a roused bird of prey.
The indetermincay of the sighting of Hexman is crucial to the sense of trauma and bewilderment endured by the girl’s participation in these ghastly night rituals. The whole chapter takes place in darkness so that the reader and Lizzie experience this nightmare journey almost at a primal level. The predatory nature of a father whose profession is to feed off the dead is offset by his real affection for her and the admision that the river engenders life in terms of their livelihood. If gaffer was just labelled a vulture it would be too starkly conclusive and disrupt the self-preserving ‘veil’ of indetermincay that protects Lizzie and by implication, the reader. So the vulture father is shrouded by a phrase that approximates his identity rather than fixes it. And this hesitation is a key to the rest fo the narrative. We know far more than we may readliy admit and this hesitation offers us sanctuary and respite. Wonderfully contemporary !