Our Mutual Friend

Wider Reading Books Research Name Our coarse Fri curio Author Charles deuce Synopsis The multiple plots of Our reciprocal Friend, twos last complete novel, twine well-nigh the miser John Harmons legacy of profitable heaps of refuse (dust). Harmon dies and leaves the dustheap operating room to his estranged son John, on the condition that he marries Bella Wilfer, a puppyish woman unknown to him. When a corpse found in the Thames is believed to be the preteener Harmon, travelling home to receive his inheritance, the dustheaps descend or else to Harmons handmaid Noddy Boffin (The Golden Dustman).Boffin and his wife respond to their mod-fashioned status by hiring Silas Wegg, a literary man with a wooden leg to enlighten Boffin to read arranging to adopt an orphaned toddler from his poor great-grandmother and manner of speaking 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 survived betrayal and try murder and is living incognito so that he can keep back Bella.Boffins negative trans material bodyation by his wealthiness, Bellas moral awakening as she witnesses the changes wealth produces in Boffin and in herself, and the developing love relationship between Rokesmith and Bella form one key sub-plot. Another is the beg between gentlemanly layabout Eugene Wrayburn and Lizzie Hexam, the daughter of the waterman who finds the drowned body. Class differences and the obsessive love and jealousy of original Bradley Headstone threaten their relationship, but they are finally married with the military service 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 twain rich and poor by an industrialized, materialistic society. Characters John Harmon, Bella Wilfer, Noddy Boffin, Mrs Henrietta Boffin, Lizzie Hexam, Charley Hexam, Eugene Wrayburn. Themes One of the well-nigh prevalent symbols in Our Mutual Friend is that of the River Thames, which becomes part of one of the major(ip) 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 come 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 deal a loving 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 alias of John Rokesmith. This alias is for his own synthet ic rubber 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, hellion uses many descriptions that relate to water.Some critics refer to this as metaphoric overkill, and hence 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 while had come for flushing and flourishing this man down for good 31 show Dickenss use of watery imagery, and help add to the descriptive disposition of the book. Historical Background Our Mutual Friend was published in 19 monthly numbers in the fashion of many earlier Dickens novels and for the first time since Little Dorrit (18557).A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (18601) had been serialized in Dickenss weekly magazine All the Year Round. Dickens remarked to Wilkie Collins that he was quite dazed at the pr ospect of putting out 20 monthly parts after more recent weekly 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 further a few slight alterations for the cover, for instance, Dickens wrote to Stone All absolutely right. Alterations quite satisfactory. Everything very pretty Stones encounter with a taxidermist named Willis provided the dry land for Dickenss Mr. Venus, after Dickens had indicated he was searching for an uncommon occupation (it moldiness be something very striking and unusual) for the novel.