Wherein your co-hosts of The Dickens Chronological Reading Club 2022-24 (#DickensClub) Look ahead to weeks seven and eight of our twenty-fourth read, Our Mutual Friend.
By Rach
Friends, we are in the seventh week of our eight-week journey with Our Mutual Friend. Boze and I are so very thankful for your patience with us at this time, as we try to meet our work deadlines while preparing the house and yard to have visitors for our little wedding, two weeks from today! A few unexpected things have come up, too, unrelated to the wedding, which has made it an even busier time.
At this juncture, I will begin to give gradual focus to our final wrap-up in just under two weeks, and to hopefully contribute to the wonderful discussion, too. So, rather than try and do two extensive summaries and wrap ups, I’ll just focus on one final summary and wrap-up for the two final “books” of Our Mutual Friend, to be posted on July 22nd. Then, we will have our longer break as scheduled, before the final journey with The Mystery of Edwin Drood–which, Boze can tell you, I haven’t been able to stop talking about for years. (Why does Drood, like Pickwick, only become more wonderful over time?)
Again, Boze and I want to thank everyone hugely for their patience with us during these weeks! We really connected over the Dickens Club, so it seems so appropriate that we should be getting married as we near its end, and we hope that Dickens would approve!
July 8-22, 2024: Finishing Our Mutual Friend
For the next two weeks, our final weeks with Our Mutual Friend, we’ll be reading “Book the Fourth: A Turning,” Chapters 1-17. This portion was published in monthly installments (XVI-XX, the final being a double number) between August and November, 1865.
Feel free to comment below for your thoughts this week and next, or use the hashtag #DickensClub if you’re commenting on twitter.
If you’d like to read it online, you can find it at a number of sites such as Gutenberg.
And…a Poll!
We’re looking to have our online Zoom chat for Our Mutual Friend on Saturday, August 17th, 11am Pacific (U.S.)/2pm Eastern (U.S.)/7pm GMT (London). Approximately one hour. Does that work for you all? Please vote in the poll, and/or comment below if you want to share other ideas!
All the (Dickensian) Year Round 
I love the comedy of R. W. having to pretend that he doesn’t know anything about his daughter’s marriage when he just came from the wedding.
I’ve written before that Bella has more in common with Dickens’s more saintly heroines than one would assume at first glance. In Chapter 5, she’s just as tolerant of and forgiving toward her terrible family members as Little Dorrit or Lizzie Hexam but she is so with her own style. In the book’s words, “her old coquettish ways (were) a little sobered down but not much.”
In Chapter 5, Dickens does something he hasn’t done since David Copperfield: depict a young couple after their wedding, showing their marriage, as it were, from the inside. (Our Mutual Friend is the first Dickens book since David Copperfield to devote an entire chapter to the main characters’ wedding though the final chapter of Little Dorrit comes close.) But this time Dickens depict a functional marriage with a much more competent housekeeper. (Though it’s interesting to note that, like Dora Spenlow, Bella “had never been wont to do too much at home” before her marriage. Does the fact she changes mean that her feelings are deeper than Dora’s or just that she’s in more idealized book?) The happy marriage of the Rokesmiths isn’t as fun as the less happy one of the Copperfields either because of Dickens’s limitations or because of the inherent nature of the material. But I love that Dickens tried to actually show how John and Bella work as a married couple instead of just ending with the wedding and “they lived happily ever afterwards” as usual.
Of course, there is one big problem with the Rokesmith’s new life: The Complete British Housewife who “however sound a Briton at heart, was by no means an expert Briton at expressing herself with clearness in the British tongue, and sometimes might have issued her directions to equal purpose in the Kamskatchan language.” Since Dickens was a man, I assume he wouldn’t have read such books. I wonder what gave him the idea of satirizing them. Was it hearing complaints of his wife or daughters or just some female acquaintance?
A subtext in Chapter 5 seems to be that as much as Bella loves her father and her husband, she wants some feminine companionship. She specifically misses Mrs. Boffin and Lizzie Hexam. Or maybe that’s just because those are the only other characters with whom she’s had good relationships. I don’t know.
This quote from Bella reminds me of Sam Weller.
“There’s a dreadful Secondly, and a dreadful Thirdly to come—as I used to say to myself in sermon-time when I was a very small-sized sinner at church.”
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Bella & John are, as you say, a nice counterpart to Dora & David. Their working together as a couple is rare in Dickens and refreshing. I also like the way Bella & John are allowed by Mrs Wilfer to be received and how Bella defuses the potentially volatile situation by anticipating her mother’s and sister’s objections to her having married a Mendicant. And I also worry about Mr George Sampson – his life with Lavvy and her mother I fear is going to be worse than R.W.’s life has been.
Just a note – I think Dickens most likely had read the Complete British Housewife and other books of this nature. He was a compulsive housekeeper, if you will, and from what I’ve read he maintained control over the day-to-day workings of his household from meals to wallpaper choice. How he found the time to do so with all his professional duties is dumbfounding!
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BTW, when I wrote “The happy marriage of the Rokesmiths isn’t as fun as the less happy one of the Copperfields,” I meant it’s not as much fun to read about, not to actually experience. LOL. I was in a bit of a hurry when I wrote that.
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I so enjoy your observations about very different marriages and the sweetness of the Rokesmith-Bella domestic life.
One of my heartfelt favorite aspects of OMF is the wonderful relationship between Bella and her dear cheubic father.
Is there any relationship this joyous and spontaneous inlelsewhere in Dickens?
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“cherubic”
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I am wondering if anyone else admires how closely and faithfully the 1998 BBC series follows the novel.
Debra and I were commenting on this just a bit ago.
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I just read the excellent commentary by Ackroyd. Thanks much for sharing it, Chris.
The whole piece illuminates much about OMF and its creation.
I was particularly struck by Ackroyd’s comparison: Shakespeare ‘s “Tempest” and Dickens OMF–two master works of imagination and meaning.
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Agreed about the adaptation! Naturally, a few things are cut, but what is there is so faithful to the book!
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I finished the book!
Something I forgot to mention in my first comment was that it’s interesting that Dickens brought Georgiana Podsnap back for one more scene in Chapter 2. I’d thought her part in the story was over.
One of the reasons I’ve been critical of the romance between Eugene Wrayburn and Lizzie Hexam is that I feel like there are more similarities than differences between Eugene and Bradley Headstone. Both initially consider Lizzie beneath them but are attracted to her anyway. Both try to maneuver her into a position where she owes them by providing her with education. And both (initially) have an entitled attitude toward her and press themselves on her after she makes it clear she wants them to leave her alone. The main thing Eugene has going for him that Bradley doesn’t is that he’s not a murderer. Honestly, the parallels between the two men are so pronounced that I can’t help but think Dickens intended them. Maybe we’re just supposed to shrug and say, “That’s how it is sometimes. People, like Lizzie, sometimes fall in love with those who don’t deserve them. What can you do?”
Eugene Wrayburn does have a sense of humor, something Bradley definitely doesn’t have, and Lizzie arguably doesn’t either. I can see their romance being appealing in that sense with each supplying what the other lacks. Then again, Lizzie was friends with Jenny Wren, who is just as sarcastic and verbose as Eugene, so it’s not like she had no laughter in her life without him.
Having said that, Eugene refusing to bring his attacker to justice when doing so might hurt Lizzie’s reputation is really admirable and that act of his did reconcile me to the relationship begrudgingly.
Lizzie resembles Little Dorrit and the Marchioness of The Old Curiosity Shop in that she tends to her love interest in illness and as with Dick Swiveller, this corresponds with a moral/spiritual rebirth for Eugene. (Actually, there are lot of nonromantic variations on this plot point in Dickens. Young Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley tend to each other. Florence Dombey tends to her father, Sissy Jupe tends to Louisa Gradgrind and Joe Gargery tends to Pip. It’s a situation that apparently fascinated Dickens.) But Lizzie is the only Dickensian heroine to physically save her love interest by dragging his bleeding body out of the water and carrying it to help. That’s pretty cool!
Here’s another great insight into Bradley Headstone’s psyche.
“He had no remorse; but the evildoer who can hold that avenger at bay, cannot escape the slower torture of incessantly doing the evil deed again and doing it more efficiently. In the defensive declarations and pretended confessions of murderers, the pursuing shadow of this torture may be traced through every lie they tell. If I had done it as alleged, is it conceivable that I would have made this and this mistake? If I had done it as alleged, should I have left that unguarded place which that false and wicked witness against me so infamously deposed to? The state of that wretch who continually finds the weak spots in his own crime, and strives to strengthen them when it is unchangeable, is a state that aggravates the offence by doing the deed a thousand times instead of once; but it is a state, too, that tauntingly visits the offence upon a sullen unrepentant nature with its heaviest punishment every time.
Bradley toiled on, chained heavily to the idea of his hatred and his vengeance, and thinking how he might have satiated both in many better ways than the way he had taken. The instrument might have been better, the spot and the hour might have been better chosen. To batter a man down from behind in the dark, on the brink of a river, was well enough, but he ought to have been instantly disabled, whereas he had turned and seized his assailant; and so, to end it before chance-help came, and to be rid of him, he had been hurriedly thrown backward into the river before the life was fully beaten out of him. Now if it could be done again, it must not be so done. Supposing his head had been held down under water for a while. Supposing the first blow had been truer. Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he had been strangled. Suppose this way, that way, the other way. Suppose anything but getting unchained from the one idea, for that was inexorably impossible.”
As much as I’ve loved to hate Fledgeby, I strangely didn’t enjoy his comeuppance at the hands of Lammle as much as I enjoyed the similar scene of Nicholas Nickleby beating Wackford Squeers, mainly because of the creepy way Dickens sets it up. When Jenny Wren first heard Fledgeby screaming from another room while Mrs. Lammle listened with satisfaction, my first thought was that her husband was murdering the man. I enjoy Silas Wegg’s comeuppance more even though I didn’t love to hate him as much.
I wrote before that it was distressing to see the usually savvy Jenny Wren be conned by Fledgeby. Chapter 9 broadens her character in different, more positive ways as she apologizes to Riah and mourns for her “child.” (She also later gets something of an implied love interest in Sloppy.) Previously, I didn’t really understand why Rach called her a heroine. She struck me as more of a wacky sidekick. But now I get it. (Could Mrs. Lammle be called an antiheroine? She reminds me of Edith Dombey though not as fully developed or charismatic.)
Chapter 11 could have just been heartwarming, focusing as it does on a wedding, but Dickens also includes some good suspense with Rokesmith avoiding Mortimer Lightwood and Reverend Frank Milvey’s encounter with Headstone.
While Dickens often gives his heroes children after the main events of their plots, John and Bella actually have a baby before their story is fully resolved. This baby isn’t developed as much as the ones in The Cricket on the Hearth or The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, but it has more personality than the children of, say, Nicholas Nickleby or David Copperfield.
I’ve read some speculate that Dickens originally intended Mr. Boffin to genuinely become corrupted by wealth and then have a change of heart, but that Dickens abandoned this plan at the last minute and had Boffin be putting on an act. I don’t particularly get that impression. Didn’t Dickens note that Boffin looked for books about misers when he was with Bella specifically, implying that it was really for her benefit? And it could be guessed that he was studying the books to learn how to act like a miser, not to actually be one. Dickens also had Mrs. Boffin sense the ghost of John Harmon relatively early in the book, suggesting he always intended her to be the one to guess Rokesmith’s secret.
This, of course, brings us to the book’s most controversial plot point, one that makes even fans of it uncomfortable: Bella being deceived by her own husband and the Boffins into her own husband. Given the age of her baby, this must have lasted for half a year or so! It’s pretty ridiculous, even offensive, that she’s not angered by it. Sheesh, I was uncomfortable even with her being so confident in her husband even when he was acting so weird about Lightwood and when it really looked like he was John Harmon’s murderer. Still, in a way, it’s a tribute to Dickens that this plot point stands out. Considering how archetypal his characters and stories are, you’d expect there to be more instances of characters accepting the unacceptable just because that’s how the plot goes. (The love story of John Harmon and Bella Wilfer is very similar to the Grimm fairy tale, King Thrushbeard and you can’t say it’s aged less well than that. The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm) As much as the ending to this plotline induces cynicism, it’s also inextricable from it and it’s such a striking and exciting plotline that I can’t say Dickens shouldn’t have written it.
I wasn’t feeling sorry for George Sampson before. Like Edmund Sparkler in Little Dorrit, he seemed so oblivious to how cruelly his intended used him that I couldn’t pity him much. But in Chapter 16 when he expressed discomfort with having to compete with the richer John Harmon, then I started to worry about the guy.
Hurrah for Twemlow standing up to everybody else in Chapter 17! That was satisfying to read.
I feel melancholy now that I’ve finally read the last ending Dickens wrote. (He’d start to write another book, but he wouldn’t be able to finish it.) I’m not sure where I’d rank Our Mutual Friend among Dickens’s books. It’s somewhere in the middle but I’m not sure just where in the middle yet. It reminds me of A Tale of Two Cities. With that book, I enjoyed the first half or so, the part before the revolution, well enough but wasn’t blown away by it. The second half, on the other hand, was awesome. With Our Mutual Friend, I found the first of the four books that make it up (The Cup and the Lip) kind of a drag but the other three books (Birds of a Feather, A Long Lane and A Turning) to be great. Which of the two do I prefer? Well, the part of A Tale of Two Cities I didn’t like as much was better than the part of Our Mutual Friend I didn’t like as much. On the other hand, the part of Our Mutual Friend I loved, well, I wouldn’t call it better than the part of A Tale of Two Cities I loved but it was longer and it had a higher number of vivid characters. Both books suffered a bit IMO from the way some of their characters were developed. I think I like both of them better than Bleak House and Hard Times, but I might like Little Dorrit better than either. I’ll have to read them all again to say for sure.
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In defense of Lizzie choosing Eugene over Bradley – I agree that the two men’s courtships, if you will, are very similar. The one thing in Eugene’s favor is that he took the time to get to know Lizzie before pressing his suit.
After simply seeing her (Bk 1 Ch 3, 13, 14), Eugene established a friendly relationship with her (Bk 2 Ch 1, 2, 6). Lizzie’s response to him: “There was an appearance of openness, trustfulness, unsuspecting generosity, in his words and manner, that won the poor girl over”. (Bk 2 Ch 2) And by Bk 2 Ch 11 Lizzie is in love with him.
Bradley, on the other hand, has met her maybe three times (Bk 2 Ch 1, Bk 2 Ch 2 & 11) before he proposes (Bk 2 Ch 15). Lizzie takes an almost immediate dislike to him. When Bradley comes to her to talk of Charley’s & his plan for her education (Bk 2 Ch 11 ) she reacts with “some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of fear”. (Bk 2 Ch 11) And explaining her rejection of his proposal to her brother she says bluntly, “I mean that I do not like him”. (Bk 2 Ch 15)
Granted Eugene is, initially, grooming her – Mortimer, Charley, Bradley, even Jenny, Lizzie and Eugene himself can’t help but see it – and she is in danger of being compromised. Wisely, Lizzie takes steps to protect herself, fending off his advances to the point of running away from him. And when he finds her out, she bluntly tells him that she will continue to run away should he continue to pursue her. (Bk 4 Ch 6)
It takes his dear-death experience at the hands of Bradley for Eugene to realize his “feelings of a gentleman”, to use Mr Twemlow’s words, and to do what naturally springs from his “feelings of gratitude, of respect, of admiration, and affection” – he marries Lizzie. (Bk 4 Ch 17)
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On Jenny, in addition to Sara Schotland’s article (thank you, Rach!), there is also Clare Walker Gore, *Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth-Century Novel* (Edinburgh UP, 2020). The intro, and much of chapter 1 which is on Dickens and largely Jenny (‘A Possible Person: Marking the Minor Character in Dickens’), is readable on Google Books.
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Thanks, Lucy!! I’ll check that out! Miss Jenny is just the BEST. ❤
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Listening (figuratively speaking) to Lizzie and Charley’s voices all through this read-through, I’ve been hearing the voices of Tom and Maggie Tulliver from *The Mill on the Floss*, surely the greatest sister/brother pair of all time. I thought The Mill on the Floss was a much later work. But it wasn’t! It was published five years *before* OMF, in 1860.
Lizzie and Charley, above all the early relationship with Lizzie making out their fortunes in the coals of the fire, has to be partly shaped by/a response to (perhaps unconsciously) Tom and Maggie. And the vile, ungrateful, socially climbing Tom/Charley: QED. But surely Lizzie herself, with so much more agency than any Dickens heroine before her, has to be Dickens’s processing of Maggie, even if Maggie has depths and a scale that goes far beyond her. And look at Lizzie in the boat! – at first with Gaffer, then going to save Eugene. There is Maggie, setting out across the flood to rescue Tom.
But the plot and thematic purpose to which Dickens sets Lizzie’s journey is so different. For Lizzie and Eugene, the transfiguring happy ending. For Maggie, no – she is just true to the very end to herself and what she loves.
I also note that as with Amy Dorrit, we don’t get authorial narration of Lizzie’s thoughts, by and large. We just see her in the situations and hear her speak in her own voice. Which means that we are spared the sentimentalising/editorialising. I think this is another reason why Lizzie is so satisfying. Whereas once poor darling Bella is married, for me her vitality and her interest as a character are lost. Dickens pours buckets of the ‘good little woman’ treatment over her and belittles her and patronises her, so that she ceases to be the Bella I love and becomes someone much more diminished. Not to mention the cringe factor in her gaslighting by John and the Boffins, which makes my skin crawl even though I do try to make allowances for the social conventions of the time. I still love Dickens, even if he does this awful thing.
On love, by the way, for me, the shining love relationship in OMF is Bella and her father. It’s without blemish. I don’t think Dickens ever manages to portray happy romantic love successfully. What does that tell us …
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I forgot to mention in my last comment that I’m delighted Dickens gave Mr. Venus and Pleasant Riderhood a happy ending!
I’ve been comparing Our Mutual Friend to A Tale of Two Cities some more. I’d like to clarify when I wrote that OMF had a higher number of vivid characters, I didn’t mean the characters in Two Cities were bad. For that matter, I didn’t mean that all the characters in Our Mutual Friend are great. There are just a higher number that loom large in my imagination. I’d say A Tale of Two Cities has the more satisfying ending but Our Mutual Friend, at its best anyway, is more fun to read. Then again, Two Cities isn’t necessarily trying to be fun. It’s supposed to be a more serious story. Which I’d prefer to read probably depends on my mood. Maybe someday I’ll decide one is superior but right now I lean toward them being equal.
BTW, I’m interested in the titles Dickens gave the individual books of OMF. The first two are based on popular sayings, there’s many a slip between cup and lip and birds of a feather flock together. Then he breaks the pattern. Book 3 is titled A Long Lane and Book 4 A Turning. It’d be interesting to analyze how each section of the story corresponds to its title. I’m afraid the book is so complex that I can’t do so off the top of my head, but it’d be interesting to read the take of someone who’s read it multiple times and knows it forward and back.
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My 1997 Penguin edition notes:
Book 1 – The Cup and the Lip – “Alluding to the saying ‘There’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip’. The great expectations dashed in this Book are most obviously those of the disappointed beneficiaries of old Harmon’s will . . . [and] of Riderhood’s hope of collecting the reward for catching the murderer.” (802)
Book 2 – Birds of a Feather – “Referring to the proverb, ‘Birds of a feather flock together’. We see various partnerships formed in the Book, for good and for ill, spurred by mutual interests and instincts.” (816)
Book 3 – A Long Lane and Book 4 – A Turning
From “the proverbial saying . . . ‘It is a long lane that has no turning’.” (826) So, after introducing the characters and storylines and laying the groundwork for the action in Book 1 and Book 2, Book 3 is the set-up for the resolutions that take place in Book 4.
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That’s interesting that the first two titles reinforce familiar sayings and the second two subvert one. (Turns out the lane does have a turning.)
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The length to which Bradley Headstone premeditates his crime is impressive. Like Tom Gradgrind, Headstone watches and waits, and identifies a patsy to take the fall. But this time the patsy is on to the scheme and turns the table on the would-be malefactor. Dickens’s psychological studies of guilty consciences are always so interesting – Fagin, Bill Sikes, Ralph Nickleby, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Mr Carker, Uriah Heep, and now Headstone. I particularly like Dickens’s comment, “And this is another spell against which the shedder of blood for ever strives in vain. There are fifty doors by which discovery may enter. With infinite pains and cunning, he double locks and bars forty-nine of them, and cannot see the fiftieth standing wide open.” (Bk 3, Ch 7) Headstone’s inability to see Riderhood as a threat stems from his inability to understand Riderhood as a man – this is also why Eugene does not see Headstone as a threat. Headstone is a novice miscreant. His lifelong “mechanical” (Bk 2 Ch 1) struggle to raise himself to and then maintain respectability does not lend itself to comprehending how people, especially bad people, think and behave. Eugene, with his smug upper class upbringing, disregards the feelings of those he deems beneath him and cannot understand the nature and depth of their pride. (“Those” meaning Headstone, Charley, AND Lizzie.) Eugene’s dismissiveness and taunting, coupled with Headstone’s jealousy, sends Headstone to the very edge at their first meeting – “[Eugene replied] so tauntingly in his perfect placidity, that the respectable right-hand clutching the respectable hair-guard of the respectable watch could have wound it round his throat and strangled him with it.” (Bk 2 Ch 6). Even after the attack Headstone remains “chained heavily to the idea of his hatred and his vengeance, and thinking how he might have satiated both in many better ways than the way he had taken.” (Bk 3 Ch 7).
I’ve heard epilepsy mentioned as a cause for Headstone’s behavior and have read that emotional dysregulation and epilepsy are often linked which would explain his obsessive feelings for Lizzie, his intense jealousy of Eugene, and his single-mindedness in pursuing Eugene. I am curious and am wondering if our group has any medical professionals who can provide more insight and information, specifically: Would epilepsy cause “a great spirt of blood [to] burst from [Headstone’s] nose” after he sees Eugene & Lizzie together, as well as “the convulsive twitching of [his] face, and the sudden hot humour that broke out upon it” after he hears that it was Lizzie who pulled Eugene from the river, and the fits he has after Charley’s renunciation, after speaking with Mr Milvey at the train station, and in the school room after Riderhood’s visit (Bk 3 Ch 1, 7, 11, 15 respectively)?
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Apologies – my citations should be to Book 4 (not Book 3).
[NOTE TO SELF – PROOFREAD!!!!]
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Chris, what a fascinating connection…the epilepsy/emotional dysregulation connection! Good question about the nosebleeds. I was also seeing that “esophageal ulcers” can cause such bleeding/nosebleeds, and he certainly has an “ulcer” metaphorically too. Clearly, Dickens intends for us to see his illness as metaphorical as well, something is gnawing at him, he can see/taste blood. But I’ve so often wondered what the actual condition is too, as I imagine that Dickens would have had something clearly in mind.
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I don’t remember Uriah Heep feeling particularly guilty. Could you cite that?
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“Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done—all this time being desperate too, and at his wits’ end for the means of getting the better of us—though perfectly consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.” (David Copperfield Ch 52
In Heep’s case, it’s not so much a matter of a guilty conscience as it is the behavior of a cornered animal. How he reacts to being exposed by Mr Micawber in front of David, Aunt Betsey, Agnes, Mr Dick, Traddles, and his own mother is an interesting study. His mask comes off and he lashes out at the one whom he believes to be his main foe – David – not comprehending that the cards – all the cards – are stacked against him.
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Just wanted to thank everyone for the wealth of insights! WOW! I’ve been behind due to work and various preparations for the wedding, but just wanted to leave a few thoughts before continuing this week.
I agree wholeheartedly that Dickens really shines in portraying the relationship between Bella and her father! I wonder if he is modeling it on his relationship to either Katey or Mamie. I know that the former ended up being rather resentful and defiant of Dickens; perhaps, in some way, this portrayal is the kind of relationship he wish he’d had with his daughter(s).
But I also fully understand Lucy’s point about Bella post-marriage. There is definitely a “Shakespearean problem play” aspect to this whole section of the story: the deception about John’s identity, which puts John and the Boffins in the role of “tester,” and Bella in the role of “the tested”; it is taken to an extreme, when they go so far as to allow it to get to/past the point of marriage, and she still doesn’t know the scheme, nor her husband’s true identity. I think Dickens tries to soften it by having her, earlier on, practically beg John to test her, try her, etc. But it remains a bit problematic. This whole thing in no way lessens my love of Bella–she is saintly to put up with it, honestly, so well–but makes me very frustrated at John Harmon, and at the whole situation.
But wow, Lizzie saving Eugene! Dang, that whole passage had me in tears. Not only is Dickens going the extra step of having a woman save the man she loves, but of course, no one is better than Dickens at paying off what he has set up, and in making things come full circle: her old, hated living that she made by the river has now given her the advantage, and enables her to save him. Here again, like Mr Lorry says in ATTC, we “travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning,” which is also so fitting to the entire theme of the running river, which has meant both life, death, and resurrection to several characters in this novel. It is perfect.
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I feel like it’s less problematic with Shakespeare’s problem plays, like All’s Well That Ends Well, because there’s the possible interpretation that we’re supposed to question whether the ending is really happy or that we’re supposed to disagree with the main characters. Since Dickens is a more explicitly moralistic writer than Shakespeare (I don’t mean to imply that’s a bad thing in general), it seems we’re really supposed to approve of John Harmon and the Boffins’ behavior. (To be fair, I can sympathize with John wanting to Bella to agree to marry him before she knew that she’d get money. It’s mostly how long the deception lasts that makes it eyebrow raising.)
I guess you could say Lizzie’s time of shame with her father is like Dr. Manette’s time in the Bastille. It seems horrible at the beginning of the book but ends up coming in really handy later.
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Greetings, Inimitables!
I’m gaining so much from your ruminations on this masterful work of Dickens—all of the “problem” aspects notwithstanding.
Chris, in our family, we fondly refer to Headstone as “Headcase.” Your reflections on his possibly physiologically and neurologically based issues raises an important aspect. Might we find some reason to sympathize with his plight and his much-thwarted personality?
Lucy, your great insight into the loss of vivacity in Bella after her marriage makes great sense—as I think back. She is learning how to be a “good housewife”—in itself, a worthy undertaking. But, she has so much vim, vigor, and vitality that are at risk of being literally “domesticated”!
I delighted in your thought about the wonderful Bella-Cherub Father relationship and the often less-satisfying marital relationships . . . hmmmmmm!
Adaptation Stationmaster, you did a marvelous job of summarizing your experience reading OMF, and comparing many of its facets to other novels by Dickens. Thanks for that! Rich!
Rach, excellent rug-that-holds-the-room-together perspective: we “travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning,” which is also so fitting to the entire theme of the running river, which has meant both life, death, and resurrection to several characters in this novel. It is perfect.”
I kept pondering the leitmotif of the river as I made my way through the novel, and you captured its symbolic power wonderfully.
Blessings to all!
Daniel
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I’ve been meaning to bring up something for a while but there’s been so much else to talk about I’m only getting around to it now. It’s standard for fictional romances nowadays to begin with the future lovers hating each other but John Rokesmith and Bella Wilfer are the only couple in Dickens to do so. That makes Our Mutual Friend one of his most modern feelings books.
I don’t entirely mean that as a compliment. The trope has become so standard that it’s actually refreshing to read Dickens and find that it’s possible for a love story to not start with the lovers hating each other. But after every other Dickens book, it’s also refreshing to see him trying something new for him. Some of the best things about Our Mutual Friend are things that Dickens didn’t do (or seldom did) in his previous books. It makes me wistfully wonder what other new ground he would have covered had he lived longer.
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I’m thinking how alike the Lammles and the Veneerings are with the exception that the Veneerings had been better able to live on, apparently, nothing a year for the duration of Our Mutual Friend. (Also see Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, Ch 36 “How to Live Well on Nothing a Year” and Ch 37 “The Subject Continued”.) That appearances can be deceiving is an understatement with these two couples. One wonders if, in their expatriation, they don’t pool their non-resources and play themselves against each other for profit. Each couple’s winning personalities and their ability to take cues from each other could, if employed in tandem, be effective in many little – and perhaps big – schemes against an unsuspecting and susceptible Society.
Which leads me to a point made in the Introduction by Adrian Poole to my 1997 edition of OMF: “What does it mean to read, or to be able to read?” (xx)
Initially we are shown characters who either can or cannot read in the literal sense with the narrator commenting ““No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.” (Bk 1 Ch 3)
Later reading takes on a new meaning with Eugene’s aside, “(By-the-by, that very word, Reading, in its critical use, always charms me. An actress’s Reading of a chambermaid, a dancer’s Reading of a hornpipe, a singer’s Reading of a song, a marine painter’s Reading of the sea, the kettle-drum’s Reading of an instrumental passage, are phrases ever youthful and delightful.)” (Bk 3 Ch 10)
And so as the novel progresses we witness characters not simply being read to or learning to read, but Reading or mis-Reading each other. Says Poole, “. . . the distinction with which the novel is most concerned . . . is between two kinds of reading, one passive and mechanical, the other active and performative. . . . reading is or should be a matter of active interpretation . . . analysis, interpretation and performance are all bound up in the true sense of reading”. (xxi)
The movement from illiteracy, from ignorance, toward literacy, toward knowledge and comprehension is the point of this novel. Sophronia and Alfred are prime examples, mis-reading each other because they read passively and mechanically – they have not done their research into each other’s background to discover there is nothing there. Their schemes rely on appearance rather than on substance. When substance is discovered, their schemes fail as when Sophronia begins to see herself in poor, silly Georgiana Podsnap. Her sense of sisterhood causes her to enlist Mr Twenlow to enlighten Mr Podsnap. Their plan to ingratiate themselves with the Boffins fails because the Boffins, themselves in the midst of a scheme, too easily read their motives. I’m wondering if “Lammle” stems from the word “lame” – meaning pitiful, cheap, dirty, wretched, mean, nasty, disgusting, hateful (to take just the first 8 synonyms). The Venerrings – as their name suggests – I fear will always lack substance, will always remain surface readers.
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Wonderful, insightful analysis, Chris!!
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As I mentioned, with the end of Our Mutual Friend we come to the last closing sentence that Dickens would write. This makes me want to look back at all such sentences. (Well, not all of them. Just the ones from the novels and novellas.) And while I’m doing that, I thought I’d look at all his opening sentences too. What I’m saying is…this is going to be a very long comment. I thought of asking Rach if I could do it as a blog post but since most of it’d be listing things Dickens wrote and very little of it my own thoughts, I discarded that idea. Here we go.
The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted. The Pickwick Papers.
Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter. Oliver Twist
There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr. Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason. Nicholas Nickleby
Although I am an old man, night is generally my time for walking. The Old Curiosity Shop
In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London—measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore—a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew. Barnaby Rudge
As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to polite breeding, can possibly sympathize with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first assured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is a great satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly descended in a direct line from Adam and Eve; and was, in the very earliest times, closely connected with the agricultural interest. Martin Chuzzlewit
Marley was dead: to begin with. A Christmas Carol in Prose
There are not many people—and as it is desirable that a story-teller and a story-reader should establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people: little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or already growing down again—there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a church. The Chimes
The kettle began it! The Cricket on the Hearth
Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. The Battle of Life
Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new. Dombey and Son
Everybody said so. The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. David Copperfield
London. Bleak House
“Now, what I want is, Facts.” Hard Times
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day. Little Dorrit
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. A Tale of Two Cities
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. Great Expectations
In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in. Our Mutual Friend
An ancient English Cathedral Tower? The Mystery of Edwin Drood
It seems like towards the beginning of his career Dickens would start his books with really long and sometimes rather clunky sentences (though I think the one in The Pickwick Papers is intended as parody) and he tended to use relatively shorter and snappier opening sentences as time went on though this pattern isn’t consistent. His most cherished openings are probably the ones for A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities. Personally, I’m rather fond of the ones for The Cricket on the Hearth, Dombey and Son and The Haunted Man. Hard Times is the only one where the first sentence is a piece of dialogue. Which are your favorites?
Now on to the closing sentences.
Every year he repairs to a large family merry-making at Mr. Wardle’s; on this, as on all other occasions, he is invariably attended by the faithful Sam, between whom and his master there exists a steady and reciprocal attachment which nothing but death will terminate. The Pickwick Papers
I believe it none the less because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak and erring. Oliver Twist
Through all the spring and summertime, garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands, rested on the stone; and, when the children came to change them lest they should wither and be pleasant to him no longer, their eyes filled with tears, and they spoke low and softly of their poor dead cousin. Nicholas Nickleby
Such are the changes which a few years bring about, and so do things pass away, like a tale that is told! The Old Curiosity Shop
From that period (although he was supposed to be much affected by the death of Mr Willet senior), he constantly practised and improved himself in the vulgar tongue; and, as he was a mere infant for a raven when Barnaby was grey, he has very probably gone on talking to the present time. Barnaby Rudge
As it resounds within thee and without, the noble music, rolling round ye both, shuts out the grosser prospect of an earthly parting, and uplifts ye both to Heaven! Martin Chuzzlewit
And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One! A Christmas Carol in Prose
So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy. The Chimes
A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a broken child’s toy lies upon the ground: and nothing else remains. The Cricket on the Hearth
But as I have observed that Time confuses facts occasionally, I hardly know what weight to give to his authority. The Battle of Life
He only answers, “Little Florence! little Florence!” and smooths away the curls that shade her earnest eyes. Dombey and Son
Deepened in its gravity by the fire-light, and gazing from the darkness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate face in the portrait, with the beard and ruff, looked down at them from under its verdant wreath of holly, as they looked up at it; and, clear and plain below, as if a voice had uttered them, were the words. Lord keep my Memory green. The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain
O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward! David Copperfield
But I know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me—even supposing—. Bleak House
We shall sit with lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn gray and cold. Hard Times
They went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the froward and the vain, fretted and chafed, and made their usual uproar. Little Dorrit
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” A Tale of Two Cities
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her. Great Expectations
When the company disperse—by which time Mr and Mrs Veneering have had quite as much as they want of the honour, and the guests have had quite as much as they want of the other honour—Mortimer sees Twemlow home, shakes hands with him cordially at parting, and fares to the Temple, gaily. Our Mutual Friend
I’ve got to say, as much as I love what happens between Twemlow and Mortimer, I wish Dickens could have ended Our Mutual Friend with a more profound or at least pseudo profound line, like the ones for The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield or Great Expectations, considering that this was the last ending he would write. It leaves me feeling a bit empty and melancholy.
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I would add to this the last line of Dickens’s “Postscript, in Lieu of Preface” to Our Mutual Friend which reads:
I remember with devout thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my readers for ever, than I was then, until there shall be written against my life, the two words with which I have this day closed this book: – THE END.
NOTE: “then” refers to 9 June 1865 when Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst Train Accident.
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I was just about to quote that same line from the postscript, Chris! Apparently, it’s the only such postscript he wrote, and it is doubly haunting because it would be the final time he would write those words (THE END) in one of his novels, as Drood was never finished.
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That final scene between Riderhood and Headstone! It absolutely gives me chills. The suicidal-murderous final act of one of Dickens’s best villains (Headstone), which has a kind of Shakespearean twist to it. Just as Macbeth believes that no harm can come to him from man of woman born, or till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane, etc, so too does Riderhood find to his peril that these “prophecies”/superstitions can easily be turned upside-down, or reinterpreted:
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I’m glad Bradley didn’t marry Miss Peecher and then give her money to Riderhood as he suggested.
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Yes, a narrow escape for Miss Peecher which she will not appreciate. Like Miss Tox she seems too steeped in propriety to exert herself to secure her man, even when she intuits, from quizzing Mary Anne, that his attention is wandering and “that the sister was at the bottom of it”. (Bk 2 Ch 11) Her presence here shows that, at one time, Bradley Headstone had been lovable – “For she loved him.” (Bk 2 Ch 1) And one can’t help but feel for her when she finds the “little parcel of [Bradley’s] decent silver watch and its decent guard, and [the note he] wrote inside the paper: ‘Kindly take care of these for me.’ . . . and left . . . on the most protected corner of the little seat in her little porch” coupled with the blow she will sustain when she learns of and the manner of his death. (Bk 4 Ch 15)
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Dickens is the master at creating situations and characters that mirror one another. Foils. Even, doppelgangers. From The Haunted Man pursued by his own shadow side, to the lookalike Carton and Darnay; Edith Dombey and Alice; “Little Em’ly” and Martha; Harmon and Radfoot; Rose and Nancy; David and Steerforth…
Just as Dickens himself needed that rush of adrenaline from performing, night after night, the murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes, Dickens seems to be obsessed by the idea of one’s own shadow side, of the choices for good and evil that are within each of us. Headstone has the capacity to be the respectable schoolmaster that he puts himself forth as. Eugene has the capacity to consider consequences for others, if not for himself, but it takes his near-death to get him to do so.
I’ve been reading the 1962 book Dickens and Crime by Philip Collins, part of the Cambridge Studies in Criminology series, more for its relation to Edwin Drood in the overall Dickens canon, but I really liked this analysis of Headstone, which puts Riderhood as Headstone’s own doppelganger—the criminal aspect of Headstone’s personality, as is reflected in Headstone’s conscious copying of his clothing:
Of course, there is always the possibility of redemption, of resurrection, in Dickens, but Headstone cannot possibly see this, in his narrow vision of either-or: Eugene, or me; tormented life, or death.
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Headstone’s real crime is the murder of his own respectability. Riderhood’s blackmail is simply the excuse for Headstone to kill himself. Charley Hexam’s renunciation is the verbalization of Headstone’s inner feeling. He knows – knew – that his attack on Eugene would doom him but he was so blinded by his attraction to Lizzie, his jealousy of Eugene, and his indignation at Eugene’s dismissal & taunting that he could not stop himself. We all fight against our demons – sadly, it was a battle Bradley could not win.
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