Our Mutual Friend is one of English author Charles Dickens’s most atmospheric and elaborately plotted novels. It is filled with scenes portraying the docks, lodgings, and byways of London. The novel satirizes greed and attacks the false values of the newly rich. However, it does so in a way that reveals Dickens at the height of his psychological and descriptive powers. Dickens uses the image of the great rubbish dumps of London to symbolize “filthy money.” Our Mutual Friend was published in monthly installments during 1864 and 1865 and appeared in one volume in 1865. It was Dickens’s final complete novel.
The hero of the novel is John Harmon, the son of a dust-contractor, a businessman who runs a trash-hauling and scavenging service. The novel begins with Harmon sailing home from exile, expecting to receive an inheritance. His father has made it a condition of the inheritance that he marry Bella Wilfer, whom he does not know. Harmon confides to a shipmate, George Radfoot, that he intends to hide his identity until he knows what his future wife is like. Radfoot tries to murder Harmon and takes his identity papers. However, Radfoot is murdered, and because he has Harmon’s papers, the authorities assume that it is John Harmon who is dead.
Harmon survives and takes the name of John Rokesmith. His father’s old foreman, the benevolent Mr. Boffin, has inherited the property in place of John Harmon. Mr. Boffin takes Rokesmith on as his secretary. Boffin has adopted Bella Wilfer, whose head is turned by the newly acquired wealth. Rokesmith falls in love with her, but she rejects him scornfully. Mrs. Boffin discovers who Rokesmith really is, and she and her husband plot to open Bella’s eyes to his merits. Mr. Boffin pretends to become hard and grasping, and after thoroughly humiliating Rokesmith, he dismisses him. Bella realizes the evils of wealth, follows Rokesmith, and marries him. Rokesmith’s true identity is finally revealed.
The subplot of the novel concerns a young lawyer, Eugene Wrayburn, who loves Lizzie Hexam, the daughter of a boatman. Bradley Headstone is a rival for Lizzie’s love, and he tries to murder Wrayburn on a riverbank outside London. The scene is among the most powerful in all of Dickens’s work. Lizzie saves Wrayburn, and the two marry.
