Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens: a summary of the plot

“Our Mutual Friend” was the last novel completed by Charles Dickens, being finished in September 1865. It has the most complex plot, with several strands being woven together. However, it also focuses on a number of typical Dickensian themes, such as class, education, and marrying for money.

Gaffer Hexam earns his living by pulling dead bodies from the River Thames and removing any valuables before passing them on to the authorities. One night he salvages a body that is believed to be that of John Harmon, who is the heir to a considerable fortune. This fortune consists of the ownership of several enormous mountains of rubbish (referred to as “dust heaps”) that were known in Victorian London to be sources of considerable wealth, as items of value were often found in such heaps.

If Harmon is dead, Noddy Boffin, who was the servant of John Harmon’s father, stands to inherit the fortune. Boffin takes on two employees, Silas Wegg and John Rokesmith. Wegg is a one-legged ballad seller, who is employed to read to the illiterate Boffin, and Rokesmith is to be his secretary. The Boffins also take Bella Wilfer, who had been engaged to John Harmon, into their home.

“Society” is represented by the aptly named Veneerings. They patronize the Lammles, who marry in the belief that each other has a fortune, only to discover their error too late. They then swear revenge on Society, which they do by befriending Georgiana Podsnap, daughter of pompous and opinionated John Podsnap, encouraging her to form a liaison with Fascination Fledgeby, who is a mean-minded hypocrite moneylender.

Gaffer Hexam has been falsely accused of the murder of John Harmon by Rogue Riderhood, who is another Thames-side scavenger. However, Gaffer is himself found drowned before Riderhood can claim the reward for solving the mystery. Gaffer’s devoted daughter Lizzie, who had helped her father in his work and is an accomplishment boat-person herself, takes lodgings with “Jenny Wren”, who makes dresses for dolls.

Lizzie becomes noticed by two potential suitors. One is Eugene Wrayburn, an indolent barrister who has become interested in the John Harmon case, and the other is Bradley Headstone, the schoolmaster of Lizzie’s young brother Charley. However, Lizzie has no interest in marrying either of them and runs away to a country cottage.

Noddy Boffin has become a miser, to the despair of Bella. He also becomes the target of Silas Wegg, who searches for a will that will disinherit Boffin.

Rokesmith, who is in fact the far-from-dead John Harmon in disguise, proposes to Bella, who rejects him in the belief that he has no money. However, Boffin then turns Rokesmith out of his house and Bella accepts Rokesmith’s second proposal.

Eugene Wrayburn has used underhand means to track Lizzie down and he goes to find her, followed by Bradley Headstone. Headstone assaults Wrayburn, leaving him for dead. However, he is rescued by Lizzie, thanks to her skill in handling a boat, and they are married while his life is still in danger.

Headstone had dressed himself to look like Rogue Riderhood, who is now a lock-keeper, with a view to placing on the latter the blame for the intended murder of Wrayburn. When Riderhood discovers this he tries to blackmail Headstone, but in the fight that ensues they both fall into the lock and are drowned.

Silas Wegg’s attempt to blackmail Noddy Boffin with a new-found will that left all the Harmon money to the Crown, backfires when Boffin produces a still later will that leaves the estate to himself. However, he also reveals that his miserliness had been a pretence to persuade Bella not to take a similar attitude towards money, and she and John Harmon are made Boffin’s heirs.

All the mysteries are resolved at the end, with the original confusion over John Harmon’s supposed death being explained by the fact that he had originally intended to observe Bella Wilfer, the bride intended for him by his father, in disguise, but the seaman with whom he changed identities ended up in the Thames. Being thought dead was therefore to his advantage, although that was not originally part of the plan.

The Lammles’s schemes come to nothing, and they are foiled at the end, as is Silas Wegg.

Justice is therefore served, and the couples who are united do so for love rather than financial motives. Some of the plot twists are somewhat contrived, such as the final will turning up at a convenient juncture, but that is not untypical of a Dickens novel. However, Dickens also gives us his usual panoply of strong character portraits and interesting psychologies, all serving the end of attacking class prejudice and mercenary attitudes.

One of the more revealing twists is the destruction of self-made Bradley Headstone and the rescue of idle Eugene Wrayburn, a moral judgment that the younger Dickens would not have made. The message of “Our Mutual Friend” is that it is a person’s motivation for their acts that matters; it is not what they are, but what they do and why they do it that determines their moral worth.

Another interesting sidelight worth mentioning is the minor character Mr Riah, an elderly Jew who helps Lizzie to escape from her rival lovers. For most of his career as a writer, Dickens had been troubled by reactions to his portrayal of Fagin in “Oliver Twist”, with many accusations of anti-Semitism being made. He always insisted that Fagin’s race and religion had nothing to do with the character that he gave him, although Fagin was probably based on a real Jewish villain named Ikey Solomon. In his last completed novel, Dickens was able to present his readers with a sympathetic portrayal of a Jew.

“Our Mutual Friend” is also notable for its strong female characters. Not only do we have Lizzie, who looks after her father and rescues Eugene, but Rogue Riderhood is also cared for by his daughter, despite his abuse of her, and Jenny Wren maintains her alcoholic and worthless father. These are all daughters whose “children” belong to the previous generation.

© John Welford