Our Mutual Friend
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| Our Mutual Friend | |
| Author | Charles Dickens |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Chapman & Hall |
| Publication date | 1865 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
Our Mutual Friend (written in the years 1864–65) is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is in many ways one of his most sophisticated works, combining deep psychological insight with social analysis. At one level it centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life" (which is, incidentally, a quote from Our Mutual Friend, spoken by Bella at the end of book III, chapter iv.) but in a deeper sense it also about 'human values'. In the opening chapter, a young man is on his way to receive his inheritance, which, according to his father's will, he can claim only if he marries Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom he has never met. However, before he can arrive, a body is found in the Thames and identified as him. The money passes on, instead, to the working-class Boffins, and the effects spread throughout various corners of London society.
Contents |
[edit] Characters in "Our Mutual Friend"
Like all of Dickens' works, Our Mutual Friend contains many characters (this list is incomplete):
[edit] Major characters
- John Harmon, the absent centre of the story
- Bella Wilfer, a mercenary young person
- John Rokesmith, a Secretary, referred to by his employer Mr Boffin as "Our mutual friend"
- Nicodemus (Noddy) Boffin, aka the Golden Dustman, probably based on Henry Dodd, a ploughboy who made his fortune removing London's rubbish
- Mrs Boffin, his wife
- Lizzie Hexam, a waterman's daughter
- Charley Hexam, her brother
- Mortimer Lightwood, a young solicitor
- Eugene Wrayburn, a dilettante barrister
- Jenny Wren, a dolls' dressmaker
- Mr Riah, Jewish manager of a money-lending business
- Bradley Headstone, a sociopathic school teacher
- Silas Wegg, a seller of ballads and would-be literary man with a wooden leg
- Mr Venus, a taxidermist and articulator of bones
- Mr Podsnap, an extremely pompous, complacent man
- Mrs Podsnap, his wife
- Georgiana Podsnap, their daughter
- Mr Inspector, a police officer
- Mr Fledgeby, often referred to as Fascination Fledgeby, a young friend of the Lammles, actual owner of Mr Riah's money-lending business
- Rogue Riderhood, an unscrupulous and conniving waterman and associate of Gaffer
[edit] Minor characters
- Julius Handford, Alias of John Rokesmith on first returning to London
- Mrs Wilfer, Bella's querulous mother
- Reginald Wilfer (The Cherub), Bella's father
- Lavinia Wilfer, Bella's younger sister
- George Sampson, Lavinia's boyfriend
- Mr Alfred Lammle, an impecunious scheming young gentleman
- Mrs Sophronia Lammle, Alfred's impecunious,scheming wife
- Mr Twemlow, a gentleman
- Mrs Betty Higden, a child-minder
- Johnny, orphan grandson of Betty
- Sloppy, a foundling, adopted by Betty
- Jesse Hexam aka Gaffer, a waterman, father of Lizzie and Charley
- Pleasant Riderhood, Rogue's daughter
- Mr and Mrs Veneering, nouveaux-riches
- Miss Abbey Potterson, proprietor of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters pub
- Miss Peecher, a school teacher
- Mr Wren, Jenny Wren's father
[edit] Original publication
Our Mutual Friend, like most Dickens novels, was published in 19 monthly installments, each costing one shilling (with the exception of the nineteenth, which was double-length and cost two). Each issue featured 32 pages of text and two illustrations by Marcus Stone.
BOOK THE FIRST: THE CUP AND THE LIP
- I - May 1864 (chapters 1-4);
- II - June 1864 (chapters 5-7);
- III - July 1864 (chapters 8-10);
- IV - August 1864 (chapters 11-13);
- V - September 1864 (chapters 14-17).
BOOK THE SECOND: BIRDS OF A FEATHER
- VI - October 1864 (chapters 1-3);
- VII - November 1864 (chapters 4-6);
- VIII - December 1864 (chapters 7-10);
- IX - January 1865 (chapters 11-13);
- X - February 1865 (chapters 14-16).
BOOK THE THIRD: A LONG LANE
- XI - March 1865 (chapters 1-4);
- XII - April 1865 (chapters 5-7);
- XIII - May 1865 (chapters 8-10);
- XIV - June 1865 (chapters 11-14);
- XV - July 1865 (chapters 15-17).
BOOK THE FOURTH: A TURNING
- XVI - August 1865 (chapters 1-4);
- XVII - September 1865 (chapters 5-7);
- XVIII - October 1865 (chapters 8-11);
- XIX-XX - November 1865 (chapters 12-17 (Chapter the Last)).
[edit] Plot summary
A rich misanthropic miser who has made his fortune from London's rubbish dies, estranged from all except his faithful employees Mr and Mrs Boffin. By his will, his fortune goes to his estranged son John Harmon, who is to return from South Africa to claim it, on condition that he marries a woman he has not met, Miss Bella Wilfer. The implementation of the Will is in the charge of the solicitor, Mortimer Lightwood, who has no other practice.
Before the son and heir can claim his inheritance, he goes missing, presumed drowned, at the end of his journey from South Africa to London. A body is found in the Thames by Gaffer Hexam, a waterman who makes his living from retrieving corpses and robbing them of valuables before rendering them to the authorities. The body is identified from papers in the pockets as that of the heir, John Harmon. Present at the identification is a mysterious young man, who gives his name as Julius Handford and then disappears.
By the terms of the miser's will, the whole estate then devolves upon Mr and Mrs Boffin, naive and good hearted people who wish to enjoy it for themselves and to share it with others. They take the disappointed bride of the drowned heir, Miss Wilfer, into their household, and treat her as their pampered child and heiress. They also accept an offer from Julius Handford, now going under the name of John Rokesmith, to serve as confidential secretary and man of business, at no salary. He uses this position to watch and learn everything about the Boffins, Miss Wilfer, and the aftershock of the drowning of the heir John Harmon. A one-legged ballad seller, Silas Wegg, is engaged to read to Mr Boffin in the evenings, and he tries to take advantage of his position and Mr Boffin's good heart to obtain other advantages from the now-wealthy dustman.
Gaffer Hexam, who found the body, is accused of murdering John Harmon by a fellow-waterman, Roger "Rogue" Riderhood, who is bitter at having been cast off as Hexam's partner on the river and who covets the large reward offered in relation to the murder. Hexam is shunned by his fellows on the river, and excluded from The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, a public house frequented by them on the river. Hexam's young son, the clever but priggish Charley Hexam, leaves his father's house in order to better himself at school, and train to be a schoolmaster, encouraged by his sister, the beautiful Lizzie Hexam. Meanwhile, Lizzie stays with her father, to whom she is devoted.
Before Riderhood can claim the reward for his false allegation against Hexam, Hexam is found drowned himself. Lizzie Hexam becomes the assistant of a doll's dressmaker. But she has caught the eye of the briefless and languid barrister, Eugene Wrayburn, who noticed her when accompanying his friend, the Harmon solicitor Mortimer Lightwood, in pursuit of Gaffer Hexam upon the accusation of Riderhood. Wrayburn falls in love with her. However, he has a violent rival in Bradley Headstone, the schoolmaster of Charley Hexam, who is set on marrying her, and believes that Wrayburn will make her his mistress but not his wife. Lizzie Hexam flees both men, getting work up river outside London.
Mr and Mrs Boffin adopt a young orphan, previously in the care of his grandmother, Betty Higden. Mrs Higden minds children for a living, assisted by the gangling foundling known as Sloppy. She has a terror of the workhouse. When Mrs Higden is found dying by Lizzie Hexam, Lizzie is thereby introduced to the Boffins and to Bella Wilfer. But Lizzie has been tracked down by Eugene Wrayburn and also by Bradley Headstone. Headstone violently assaults Wrayburn and leaves him for dead, but Lizzie finds and rescues him. Wrayburn, thinking he will die anyway, marries Lizzie, in order to save her reputation. When he survives, he is glad that this has brought him into a loving marriage, albeit with a social inferior, whom he would not otherwise have married.
Rokesmith has clearly fallen in love with Bella Wilfer, but she cannot bear to accept him, determining that she will marry only for money. Mr Boffin appears to be corrupted by his wealth, and becomes a miser. He also begins to treat his secretary Rokesmith with contempt and cruelty. This rouses the sympathy of Bella Wilfer, and both she and Rokesmith are turned out of the Boffin household. They marry, and live happily although poor.
Meanwhile, Bradley Headstone has tried to put the blame (for his murderous assault of Wrayburn) on Rogue Riderhood, now working as a lock gate keeper, by dressing in similar clothes when doing the deed. Riderhood realises this, and is also aware of the assault, and blackmails him. Headstone and Riderhood wrestle, and both fall into the canal and drown.
The one-legged parasite Silas Wegg has, with the articulator of bones Venus, discovered a will subsequent to the one which has given the Boffins the whole of the Harmon estate. By the later will, the estate goes to the Crown. Wegg and Venus decide to blackmail Boffin with this will.
It becomes clear to the reader that John Rokesmith is, in fact, the missing presumed drowned heir, John Harmon. He had been robbed of his clothes and possessions by the man later found drowned, and wrongly identified as him. Rokesmith/Harmon has been maintaining his alias in order to see Bella Wilfer before committing to marry her as required by the terms of his father's will. Now that she has married him believing him to be poor, he can throw off his disguise.
He does so, and it is revealed that Mr Boffin's ill treatment of him and his miserliness was part of a scheme to test Miss Wilfer's motives and affections, a test she has triumphantly passed.
When Wegg (abandoned by Venus) attempts to clinch his blackmail on the basis of the later will disinheriting Boffin, Boffin turns the tables by revealing a still later will, by which the fortune is granted to Boffin even at young John Harmon's expense. But the Boffins are determined to make John Harmon and his bride Bella Wilfer their heirs anyway, and so all ends well, except for the villain Wegg, who is carted away by Sloppy.
[edit] Adaptations and influence
[edit] Television
- 1998: Our Mutual Friend: BBC miniseries adapted by Sandy Welch. It starred Paul McGann and Anna Friel.
- 1976:Our Mutual Friend: BBC miniseries directed by Peter Hammond.
[edit] Miscellaneous
- At one point, the Royal Shakespeare Company considered a very long stage adaptation of the novel, featuring every last subplot and character, but shied away as there were simply too many drownings or near drownings which would have been too complicated to do on stage. They opted instead to do Nicholas Nickleby.[citation needed]
- In 2005, Paul McCartney released a song "Jenny Wren" on his Chaos and Creation in the Backyard album about the character of Jenny Wren.
- Sir Harry Johnston wrote a sequel to Our Mutual Friend, titled The Veneerings, published in the early 1920s.
[edit] Trivia
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- G. K. Chesterton, one of Dickens's critics in the early 20th century, expressed the opinion that Mr. Boffins's pretended fall into miserliness was originally intended by Dickens to be authentic, but that Dickens ran out of time and so took refuge in the awkward pretence that Boffins had been acting. Chesterton argues that while we might believe Boffin could be corrupted, we can hardly believe he could keep up such a strenuous pretence of corruption: "Such a character as his---rough, simple and lumberingly unconscious---might be more easily conceived as really sinking in self-respect and honour than as keeping up, month after month, so strained and inhuman a theatrical performance. . . . It might have taken years to turn Noddy Boffin into a miser; but it would have taken centuries to turn him into an actor."[1] However, Chesterton also praised the book as being a return to Dickens's youthful optimism and creative exuberance, full of characters that "have that great Dickens quality of being something which is pure farce and yet which is not superficial; an unfathomable farce---a farce that goes down to the roots of the universe."
- Many of the story elements so successfully used by Dickens in Our Mutual Friend were given another outing two years later in the play and 'Christmas story' No Thoroughfare, released in December 1867.
- A character in US television series Lost, Desmond Hume, is portrayed as a devoted Dickens fan, having read every novel except "Our Mutual Friend", intending it to be the last book he will read before he dies.
- T. S. Eliot originally considered titling his poem, The Waste Land "He do the Police in Different Voices"[2], an allusion to a line in the novel where Mrs. Betty Higden describes how Sloppy reads the newspaper aloud. He was later convinced by Ezra Pound to rename the poem The Waste Land.
- In the video game Half Life 2: Episode Two a chapter is named "Our Mutual Fiend" and features a character named Uriah.
[edit] External links
Online editions
- Our Mutual Friend, available at Project Gutenberg.
- Our Mutual Friend – complete book in HTML one page for each chapter.
- Our Mutual Friend - Easy to read HTML version.
- Our Mutual Friend: The Scholarly Pages. The Dickens Project.
Criticism
- "Our Mutual Friend" From Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens by G. K. Chesterton.
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