Charles Dickens, our mutual friend. Also, this is a review of Our Mutual Friend.
Wow. This was an absolute night and day from the last Dickens book I read, Martin Chuzzleshit, which let’s be honest, had no point in being written at all. Our Mutual Friend is special though — it is a deeply psychological novel, with an array of characters deeper than the last and a London unlike most in any Dickens books. It is a London very much built on the banks of the Thames — the presence of the river is comparable to another presence within that ever-present character that is London.
Our Mutual Friend is Dickens’s final completed novel and it is the culmination of his writing knowledge and prowess. Needless to say, Dickens writes his long, roundabout and cryptic sentences here, though you won’t be lost very often. Despite its size it is perhaps one of the most cohesive out of all his opuses, meaning to say that most of the characters fit perfectly into the whole, though the interactions between the different characters are multitudinous. Take away any piece of the puzzle and it is likely that we find something amiss.
That is not to say that it is a perfect novel — none of Dickens’s novels are, nor is it my personal favourite (that honour would go to either The Old Curiosity Shop or A Tale of Two Cities) but it is a book comparable to a hearty slow-cooked meal. The flavours take a long time to seep, the variety of ingredients are plentiful and the final product is inevitably delicious.
The case of the undrowned man
I think that Our Mutual Friend has one of the most original and compelling out of all Dickens’s plots. We start of course, at the Thames. A riverman and his daughter are looking for lost sailors lest they find the inheritance within the pockets of corpses. Gradually, they’d find one belonging to the inheritor of the garbageman’s fortune, a John Harmon. The “Dirt” and the wealth that it propagated are then passed on to the servants, the kindly Mr and Mrs Boffins who really had no idea how to behave with their new money compiled out of shite.
Except that John Harmon is well and alive (though he narrowly escaped death) and planned to survey the owners of this new wealth and the girl that he was bound to marry, Bella Wilfer on the condition to accept his wealth. He took to become the tenant of the Wilfers as well as the secretary of the Boffins, in a reversal of their fortunes.
On a parallel, we also see the decline of the fortunes of the riverman and his daughter, Lizzie, who had a couple of men infatuated with her as she became of age. We meet the condescending but well-meaning lawyer, Eugene Wrayburn and the schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone who were both vying for Lizzie’s affection. Their friction come to a head as Headstone becomes obsessive of Lizzie.
We meet the scum of English society, top and bottom, from the literate but conniving Silas Wegg who made it his life mission to find the hidden wealth buried underneath the Harmon garbage piles and the Veneerings and their indifferent entourage, only interested in gossip and idle talk of their own class.
Charles Dickens is everybody’s mutual friend
The Dickens collection ranges from shite to great, and Our Mutual Friend I’d argue, is nearing great. Even the minor characters Dickens used to satirise society is bang-on: The humourous portrayal of the Veneerings, who constantly invite “friends” who would blatantly ignore them during these dinners and only talk to each other (but somehow managed to sneak Mr Veneering into politics), and the Lammles who married under the web of acquaintance fostered by this entourage who only heard secondhand of each other’s wealth, only to be mutually disappointed.
The meditations of wealth and the nature of money runs in the blood of the book, perhaps than any other Dickens books. We witness the well-meaning Mr. Boffin’s altruistic responsibility at the beginning of the book and his decline to be a hermit (though this proved to be false later on). The Lammle’s pathetic attempt to uphold their social status by chronic borrowing won’t end well, especially when dealing with characters as shady as the leech-like Fledgeby. And what Dickens wrote then is even more resonant now. We keep seeing in our feeds influencers who live beyond their means and young men and women borrowing money to keep up appearances, that those with wealth are often parading the husks instead of the wheat and that credit is much too available for borrowers who think little of repayment down the track.
Parts of the novel is also one of the most terrifying psychological studies of an obsessive man — as we see the slide of Bradley Headstone from a schoolteacher with good intentions to a plain psychotic stalker who would do harm to the woman he loves. The lengths that he would go through to track Lizzie and Wrayburn is truly disturbing. But it is his demeanor, in front of his pupils, that he was able to reattach the mask of his academician in working hours, that would make us wonder if we are acquainted with a Headstone without knowing his nature when he wears not the guise of normalcy.
But on the other side of the coin, there is a lot of good and kindness in the novel. Our Mutual Friend houses one of the most satisfying arcs out of all Dickens characters in Bella Wilfer. We see her transformation from the spoiled and entitled brat to the kind and genuine young woman worthy of the wealth stripped away from her initially. I love John Harmon’s journey from an overqualified secretary to a man who became his own self outside of his wealth. I’d like to believe that there are people like the Boffins who exist untarnished by wealth (at least for some time).
It is the ending that let me down however. I cannot pretend that what I read of Mr Boffin’s true nature is only a charade. I believed him well and truly when he was obsessed with hermitism and clenching to his wealth no matter what. Dickens, I suppose, had never really been a master of tying his endings neatly and tend to give the readers what they want, which make the end predictable. But I won’t let that ordinary ending tarnish this extraordinary book. Yes, Dickens is a hit or miss author but as I am dwindling down my supply of unread Dickens, I would treasure what’s left and overlook the weaknesses.
