Our Mutual Friend Analysis

Throw out your London guidebook vision of bobbies on bicycles, beefeaters, quaint teashops, and nannies flying around with umbrellas. Actually, throw out your London guidebook. Our Mutual Friend wi...

Charles Dickens loves himself some good ol' third-person omniscient narration. It's not just because this was a popular narrative technique during his time, but also because Dickens considered hims...

All the good characters we like get married and all the bad characters either die or are sent packing. That's a pretty good indication that we're reading a comedy. But we don't necessarily know it...

Lovers of Charles Dickens might be surprised when they start reading Our Mutual Friend because the book is filled with unlikeable characters and Dickens speaks mostly in a dark, sarcastic tone. Whe...

Of all Dickens' novels, Our Mutual Friend is one of the toughest to read. And no, it's not just because it's so long, but also because Dickens' writing style is really dense and difficult to follow...

Our Mutual Friend takes its title from the fact that there are a whole bunch of characters in this book whose lives overlap in ways they don't even realize. John Harmon, for example, knows all kind...

When the company disperse—by which time Mr. and Mrs. Veneering have had quite as much as they want of honour, and the guests have had quite as much as they want of the other honour—Mortimer see...

When you think of Dickens, you might think of Oliver Twist or Great Expectations. They're lengthy, sure, but those books are pretty easy reads compared to this bad boy. No doubt, the writing in thi...

All of London is abuzz after a wealthy heir named John Harmon dies on his way to England. But the plot thickens when everyone realizes that he didn't just die—someone murdered him! So now all of...

Like most comedies, Our Mutual Friend begins with a big ol' conflict. Comedies are supposed to have happy endings, so if they begin happily, there's really nowhere to go from there, right?Anyway, t...

A rich heir named John Harmon gets murdered on his way to London to claim his inheritance. And that's not the only weird thing about the inheritance. Apparently, Harmon could only claim his fortune...

Charles Dickens might have been drawing from personal experience when he created the taxidermist Mr. Venus. Dickens actually had a pet raven named Grip, which he had stuffed and put on his writing...

Yes, this novel briefly mentions the thought of Eugene seducing Lizzie Hexam and then refusing to marry her. But it's buried under so many layers of proper Victorian language that you'd have to dig...

William Shakespeare (1.2.4)