Even by Victorian standards, Our Mutual Friend is a sprawling work. I mean that not only in terms of its size, which is formidable, but also its complexity of plot and its enormous cast of characters. At heart it is a comedy, if not a sort of fairy tale, although it wouldn’t be Dickens if there were not some pathetic moments. Most notable among these is the sick bed (the reader will incorrectly assume that it is a death bed) marriage of Eugene Wrayburn and Lizzie Hexam.
If I were asked to name a central thread in this gigantic mass of story, I would say that it is about Bella Wilfer and her maturation from a quarrelsome and mercenary young girl into a caring and sympathetic wife to John Rokesmith, the titular “friend.” This Taming of the Shrew plot line will likely not appeal to feminist critics, but then neither will the shrew. Bella is not among Dickens’s host of angelic female characters (a roll filled in this novel by Lizzie), but is a character who leaves tremendous room for improvement. Her home life is terrible (and terribly funny). She has a good natured father (repeatedly described as “cherubic”) upon whom Bella dotes. Her mother is a hysterically dour personage who regrets her marriage to a man beneath her and who is obsessed with maintaining an air of injured dignity. Bella’s younger sister Lavinia is perhaps even more shrewish than Bella, but we can’t help but like her for her consistent refusal to buy into Mrs. Wilfer’s tragic airs.
The transformation of Bella is brought about by a pair of elaborate deceptions. The first is the disguise maintained by John Rokesmith, who pretends to have been murdered as a way of observing Bella undetected and of assessing her loyalty. (We have seen a similar case of the “concealed lover” theme in the much earlier “Cricket on the Hearth.”) The second ruse is carried out by Mr. Boffin (with the somewhat reluctant help of his wife). Mr. Boffin, previously a “dustman,” has inherited the wealth of the presumably deceased John Harmon (a.k.a. John Rokesmith), or at least he would have inherited it had Harmon really been dead. At any rate, he pretends to have inherited it and further pretends that said wealth has transformed him from a Fezziwigian gentleman into an avaricious monster, all with the purpose of warning Bella of the dangers of the wealth that he knows will be hers if she marries Harmon/Rokesmith. If all this isn’t sufficiently bizarre, Bella, upon finally learning the truth, sweetly thanks her pathologically deceptive friends for the enriching moral lesson and goes on the marry John H/R.
So, in terms of plot, the novel is hopelessly unrealistic, but then Dickens always pursues a sort of realism that has nothing to do with the likelihood of his plots. The corrupting influence of wealth is real, as is anxiety about the true nature of a prospective spouse. Dysfunctional families and self-satisfied blowhards are assuredly real. (I find it curious that “Podsnappery” has not entered the general vocabulary.) And finally, Dickens hopefully reminds us, the possibility of transformation is real.
As in most Dickens, we are presented with a fantastic menagerie of characters: a man who makes his living by fishing bodies out of the Thames, a murderous schoolteacher, a pretended “literary man” (with a wooden leg), and a blackmailing taxidermist. Most memorably, Dickens gives us Jenny Wren, a crippled dressmaker for dolls. Simultaneously childlike and worldly, human and fairy-like, Jenny deserves a place among the great Dickens characters. She serves as a sometimes sharp foil to the placid Lizzie Hexam, always seeing through (or imagining that she sees through) the “tricks and manners” of others.
Summing up, Our Mutual Friend is a very strange work. While the complex narrative is tightly woven, it still gives the impression that Dickens just cut loose and did whatever he wanted, without much regard for the dull virtues of concision and plausibility. It does not surprise me that it is not among his most often read works. In terms of pure literary merit, I’m not sure that it rises to the level of Bleak House or A Tale of Two Cities. Still, it is Dickens, and vastly entertaining.