On page 527, Hartright positions himself as a modern-day holy figure through his inability to understand how flippantly people view the death of Sir. Percival. He exclaims, “One of the village women, whose white wild face I remembered, the picture of terror, when we pulled down the beam, was giggling with another woman, the picture of inanity, over an old washing-tub…Solomon in all his glory, was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of his palace” (Collins 527). This sentence references Matthew 6:29, where Jesus explains that even the extremely wealthy King Solomon did not have expensive clothes. With his extreme wisdom, he saw that worrying about worldly things like clothing inherently meant ignoring the more important things in life, like goodness and worship. This second sentence implies that Hartright is similar to Solomon in that they are both surrounded by heartlessness, yet he is able to see through their self-interest and remember the sanctity of death. Ironically, “elements of the contemptible” follow Hartright to his “castle”; this scene lies before he learns that Count Fosco has visited his apartment in London.
The description of the two women falls in line with how Hartright processes and relays information about people as an artist; both of the women are described as being “pictures.” Although this is a common phrase, because of Hartright’s artistic background, the phrase can be taken more literally, like Hartright is imagining how he would paint the women. This word choice explicitly creates a hierarchy between the painter and the painted; Hartright gets to choose how the women are depicted. If Hartright is to be taken as a holy figure like Solomon, he has the perspective to accurately discern a person’s character. Any mention of “white” cannot go unnoticed in the novel, and is normally associated with Laura or Anne’s purity. In the moment of Percival’s death, the woman behaved morally through the amount of fear she displayed. However, now that she lives without fear, she loses the innocent “white” face, and Hartright judges her to be immoral. Hartright’s judgment is consistent throughout the novel. Like a holy figure, he decides who is good and who is evil; just as his name suggests, his heart is always correct.