Ride on!

“Ride on!” is J. Steerforth’s rallying cry for relentless forward motion: he urges David Copperfield to press on through obstacles and win the race already begun. The phrase carries both force and irony. Steerforth makes endurance sound like a virtue without asking what the race is for, while David’s final wish that he had a worthy one exposes the hollowness that may lie beneath such momentum.

The phrase and its argument

J. Steerforth introduces the expression while David reads a brief letter from Peggotty reporting her husband’s hopeless condition and her efforts to manage his worsening state. Steerforth continues eating and drinking as David reads. Calling the news a bad job, he sets death against the demands of living: people die every minute, he argues, but yielding to that common fate would mean allowing every object in the world to slip away. His answer is an imperative: “Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!”

David challenges the metaphor by asking, “And win what race?” Steerforth replies that it is the race one has started in, then repeats, “Ride on!” The exchange gives the expression its central tension: it offers no destination or moral purpose beyond continuing and winning. Its urgency is clear; its goal remains undefined.

Steerforth’s self-image and David’s misgivings

The phrase matches Steerforth’s image of himself as a person of action. David notices that, although the freshness of the sea-wind remains on Steerforth’s ruddy face, there are traces suggesting the habitual strain of his fervent energy. David considers remonstrating with him about his desperate pursuit of whatever fancy takes him, including buffeting rough seas and braving hard weather, before returning to the immediate conversation. The speech therefore resonates beyond the moment: it gives a grand slogan to the restless drive David has already observed.

After the conversation, Steerforth puts on his great-coat, lights his cigar, and sets off for home. David walks with him as far as the open road. Steerforth remains in high spirits as he goes on his way, and David recalls the call to “win the race” while wishing, for the first time, that Steerforth had some worthy race to run. That reservation turns the phrase from a simple celebration of perseverance into a measure of the difference between energy and purpose.

Narrative significance

The expression is memorable because its confident command is left ethically unresolved. Steerforth treats obstacles as things to ride over, whether roughly or smoothly, and describes persistence as an end in itself. David’s parting thought does not deny the force of Steerforth’s vitality; it questions what that force serves. In the shadow of Peggotty’s news of approaching death, the language of racing also sets relentless worldly striving beside human vulnerability, without making Steerforth pause over the suffering that prompted the conversation.