Our Mutual Friend is Charles Dickens last completed novel (he would die before finishing The Mystery of Edwin Drood), serialized in 1864-65. My first introduction to the story came with the 1998 BBC adaptation, which is excellent, and it has remained one of Dickens’ novels that I enjoy the most.
Some critics have said that the River Thames (always just called “the river” in the story) is the true main character of the book. Filthy and polluted, the river is a source of both life and death. People earn their living on the river, drown and are resurrected in the river, follow the river towards their destination. It seems to contain all that is both good and horrible in England and much of the story and characters are connected to it in one way or another.
On the death of the old miser John Harmon, who made a fortune with dust mounds (he basically collected, removed and recycled rubbish), his long-banished son, also called John Harmon, must return to collect his fortune. But in order to inherit, the will indicates that he must marry a young lady called Bella Wilfer, whom he has never met. But a body is found in the river and it is believed to be his body. The money then passes to Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, good and unpretentious servants to Harmon.
As in all Dickens novels, it’s difficult to summarize his books because there are so many characters, whose plots weave in and out of each other’s. The body in the river is found by Gaffer Hexam, who earns a living stealing from the bodies he finds in the river. His daughter is Lizzie, who attracts the interest of the usually bored gentleman, Eugene Wrayburn. Lizzie also attracts the interest of her brother’s “decent” headmaster, a man who has been called the Norman Bates of Victorian literature: Bradley Headstone. Everything about him is described as decent, yet nearly everyone who comes into contact with him can palpably sense that something is off.
Mr. Boffin soon acquires a mysterious secretory named John Rokesmith, who falls in love with Bella Wilfer. Rogue Riderhood, who claims to be “a[n] honest man as gets my living by the sweat of my brow” working on the river, in reality lives up to his name of Rogue. The Jewish Mr. Riah is Dickens’ attempt to atone for creating the evil Jewish Fagin. Riah is kind and sympathetic and becomes the surrogate father to Jenny Wren, a friend of Lizzie’s. Mrs. Higden is the poor woman who possesses a horror of the workhouse. Con artists, villains, innocents, and unforgettable characters abound.
Besides the river, another theme that seems to be consistent throughout the entire story is that of stalking. Everyone seems to be stalking someone, whether for good or ill. Stalking them, watching them, loving them from a distance, resenting them, searching for them, testing them. At one point Bradley Headstone is stalking Eugene Wrayburn, who is looking for Lizzie. The line between love and obsession seems a thin one at times.
Another theme, of course, is that of greed and the corrosive effect of it on people. Greed and lust for money – miserliness once one has money. Not to mention murder, jealousy, lust, greed, hatred, obsession, indifference…
Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the novel is this quote from Mr. Twemlow, an insignificant member of Society (Society being an entity that requires capitalization) who startles everyone by bursting forth at the end of the book after spending eight hundred pages being passed over and ignored and used more as a useful appendage at Society gatherings. I like this quote because it provides a more expansive definition of love. Love is a word used so often that it becomes nearly meaningless, but Mr. Twemlow inadvertently provides a beautiful description of love’s varied facets (which I will put in bold letters). Mr. Twemlow is referring to a marriage contracted by a gentleman to a woman from the bottom of society that has turned Society aghast (operating like a sort of hollow Greek chorus providing commentary on the events of the story, but woefully out of touch and bound by their rules and self-congratulations).
‘A gentleman can have no feelings who contracts such a marriage,’ flushes Podsnap.
‘Pardon me, sir,’ says Twemlow, rather less mildly than usual, ‘I don’t agree with you. If this gentleman’s feelings of gratitude, of respect, of admiration, and affection, induced him (as I presume they did) to marry this lady–‘
‘This lady!’ echoes Podsnap.
‘Sir,’ returns Twemlow, with his wristbands bristling a little, ‘YOU repeat the word; I repeat the word. This lady. What else would you call her, if the gentleman were present?’
This being something in the nature of a poser for Podsnap, he merely waves it away with a speechless wave.
‘I say,’ resumes Twemlow, ‘if such feelings on the part of this gentleman, induced this gentleman to marry this lady, I think he is the greater gentleman for the action, and makes her the greater lady. I beg to say, that when I use the word, gentleman, I use it in the sense in which the degree may be attained by any man. The feelings of a gentleman I hold sacred, and I confess I am not comfortable when they are made the subject of sport or general discussion.’
Gratitude, respect, admiration, and affection live on, though Society is too blinkered to notice.
Little Dorrit – Charles Dickens
Actually, there are two main heroes. Arthur Clennam is a middle-aged man who returns to London from China after working twenty years in business with his father. His father is now dead and he returns to tell his mother that he feels that he has discharged his duty to the family and wishes to resign from the business. His mother, self-righteous, cold and implacable, is not very understanding.
Meanwhile, Arthur Clennam begins trying to help the Dorrit family. William Dorrit has been in the Marshalsea – a debtor’s prison (where Dickens’ father spent time) – for over twenties years and is looked after by his daughter, Amy Dorrit, also known as Little Dorrit. Little Dorrit is twenty-one, but so tiny that from a distance people mistake her for a child. But though slight in appearance, she is mighty in goodness and steadfastness. In fact, Little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam stand out in a selfish and grim world, in their steadfast attempts to help others and maintain their friends.
There are so many other, vibrant characters, and secrets, reversals of fortune, revenge and hatred and blackmail and lost hopes and bitterness and love, debt and poverty and excess wealth. One of the great creations of Little Dorrit is the Circumlocution Office, the supreme example of bureaucracy, where the goal is “how not to get things done.” Arthur Clennam must repeatedly venture into the Circumlocution Office in an effort to look into things, only to be defeated by rounds of paperwork and idiot officials. You have to read the book to really appreciate it all and it’s a brilliant book. It unfolds slowly, as many disparate characters are introduced, only to be brought together in the end in the kaleidoscopic way that Dickens often employed.
original illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne
Along with the monolithic Circumlocution Office is monolithic Society, which engages in the most shameless deception, both towards itself and others. The swindler, Mr. Merdle, deludes Society, but Society also deludes themselves, so worshipful are they of anyone who has the appearance of making a lot of money. The bitter Miss Wade deceives herself by believing that no one really loves her and that whenever people are trying to be kind, they are actually lording it over her because she does not know who her parents are.
Arthur Clennam’s mother deceives herself and others. Not only is she hiding a secret from Arthur about his father, but she is so dogmatically convinced of her own wrathful righteousness that it affects her health and she becomes essentially imprisoned in a wheel chair, always in the same room of her house. Mr. Dorrit knows that his children – Amy, Tip and Fanny – must earn their living, but prefers to pretend to himself and everyone else that he is still a gentlemen and they are just out making social calls. And when the Dorrit family does come into money, he likes to pretend that the entire twenty years of living at the Marshalsea never happened at all. Not to mention overlooking how much his daughter, Amy, has done for him. Even good Mrs. Flora Finching (who brings an entirely new dimension to the phrase “motor mouth”) likes to delude herself that Arthur is going, at any moment, to renew his romance with her from twenty years ago.
And the aggravating thing is that there is no reasoning with these kinds of people. Miss Wade cannot be persuaded that there are genuinely good people in existence. When Mr. Dorrit’s brother, Fredrick, remonstrates with him and Fanny and Tip for overlooking how much Little Dorrit pulled them through their years of poverty, they refuse to see his point, instead imaging themselves unreasonably abused.
But that is the profound truth of Dickens. People are not swayed by reason or truth or facts when they find it convenient to believe something else, whether for pride or self-interest or some other self-absorbed motive. The primary objective for those people is putting on a good front and rationalizing themselves to themselves and others.
Mrs. General – hired to be a companion to Amy and Fanny Dorrit – tries to instruct Amy (Fanny needs no instruction on this point) on how to form “a surface.” “Nothing disagreeable should ever be looked…A truly refined mind will seem to be ignorant of the existence of anything that is not perfectly proper, placid and pleasant.” Mrs. General likes words that begin with “p.” She believes the letter ‘p’ is uniquely designed to cause the mouth and face to be formed in the most ladylike and pleasing expression and will repeat to herself at proper intervals, “Papa, potato, poultry, prunes and prism.”
Dickens’ ends the book with this line about Little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam. He, too, seems to have accepted that the world is going to remain the way it is. The only thing that makes it bearable is the presence of people like Amy and Arthur.
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Posted by christinawehner on August 24, 2015 in Books
Tags: Arthur Clennam, Book Review, Charles Dickens, Debtors' Prison, Fiction, Little Dorrit, London, Self-deception, Social Commentary, Victorian Literature