Our Mutual Friend

Wider Reading Books Research Name Our Mutual Friend write Charles Dickens Synopsis The multiple plots of Our Mutual Friend, Dickenss last complete novel, twine around the miser John Harmons legacy of profitable heaps of refuse (dust). Harmon dies and leaves the dustheap surgery to his estranged son John, on the condition that he marries Bella Wilfer, a young woman unknown to him. When a body found in the Thames is believed to be the jr. Harmon, travelling home to receive his inheritance, the dustheaps descend instead to Harmons servant Noddy Boffin (The Golden Dustman).Boffin and his wife respond to their new status by hiring Silas Wegg, a literary man with a wooden leg to teach Boffin to read arranging to adopt an orphaned toddler from his poor great-grandmother and bringing the socially ambitious Bella Wilfer into their home, where she is watched and evaluated by John Rokesmith, a mysterious young man employed as Boffins secretary. Rokesmith is actually John Harmon, who has survi ved betrayal and attempted murder and is living incognito so that he can observe Bella.Boffins negative transformation by his wealth, Bellas moral awakening as she witnesses the changes wealth produces in Boffin and in herself, and the developing love blood between Rokesmith and Bella form one key sub-plot. Another is the love story between gentlemanly idler Eugene Wrayburn and Lizzie Hexam, the daughter of the waterman who finds the drowned body. Class differences and the obsessive love and jealousy of schoolmaster Bradley Headstone threaten their relationship, but they are finally married with the help of the crippled dolls dressmaker Jenny Wren.The smaller plots that interweave these sensation/romance narratives comment on the hypocrisy of fashionable life (Podsnappery) and the destruction of the family lives of both rich and poor by an industrialized, materialistic society. Characters John Harmon, Bella Wilfer, Noddy Boffin, Mrs Henrietta Boffin, Lizzie Hexam, Charley Hexam, E ugene Wrayburn. Themes One of the most predominate symbols in Our Mutual Friend is that of the River Thames, which be injects part of one of the major themes of the novel, rebirth and renewal.Water is seen as a sign of new life, used by churches during the sacrament of Baptism as a sign of purity and a new beginning. In Our Mutual Friend, it has the same meaning. Characters like John Harmon and Eugene Wrayburn end up in the waters of the river, and flow out reborn as new men. Wrayburn emerges from the river on his deathbed, but is ready to marry Lizzie to save her reputation. Of course, he surprises everyone, including himself, when he survives and goes on to have a sweet marriage with Lizzie.John Harmon also appears to end up in the river through no fault of his own, and when Gaffer pulls his body out of the waters, he adopts the assumed relieve oneself of John Rokesmith. This alias is for his own safety and peace of mind he wants to know that he can do things on his own, and does not need his fathers name or money to make a good life for himself. 29 Throughout Our Mutual Friend, Dickens uses many descriptions that relate to water.Some critics refer to this as metaphoric overkill, and thence there are numerous images described by water that have nothing to do with water at all. 30 Phrases such as the depths and shallows of Podsnappery, 31 and the time had come for flushing and flourishing this man down for good 31 show Dickenss use of watery imagery, and help add to the descriptive nature of the book. Historical screen background Our Mutual Friend was published in nineteen monthly numbers in the fashion of many earlier Dickens novels and for the first time since junior-grade Dorrit (18557).A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (18601) had been serialized in Dickenss weekly magazine altogether the Year Round. Dickens remarked to Wilkie Collins that he was quite dazed at the prospect of putting out twenty monthly parts after more recent w eekly serial. Our Mutual Friend was the first of Dickenss novels not illustrated by Hablot Browne, with whom he had collaborated since The Pickwick Papers (18367).Dickens instead opted for the younger Marcus Stone and, uncharacteristically, left much of the illustrating process to his discretion. After suggesting only a few slight alterations for the cover, for instance, Dickens wrote to Stone All perfectly right. Alterations quite satisfactory. Everything very pretty Stones encounter with a taxidermist named Willis provided the basis for Dickenss Mr. Venus, after Dickens had indicated he was searching for an uncommon occupation (it must(prenominal) be something very striking and unusual) for the novel.