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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Our Mutual Friend, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Society, Class, and Character
Greed and Corruption
Marriage, Adoption, and Family
Education vs. Real-World Experience
Misfits and Outcasts
Summary
Analysis
On the first anniversary of Alfred and Sophronia’s wedding, Twemlow gets ready to go to a celebratory breakfast. At the breakfast, Alfred looks proud to present Fledgeby to Lady Tippins, then to Twemlow. The Veneerings are also in attendance, with Mr. Veneering now a proud member of Parliament.
This passage seems to set up a celebration of everything these characters have accomplished over the past year. But just as a “veneer” only covers something’s surface, beneath the surface of these achievements is often a darker truth (like the fact that Alfred and Sophronia are struggling with money).
Themes
Lady Tippins is getting drunk and talking with Mortimer and Eugene. Mortimer tells Lady Tippins some gossip, including some of the things that have happened to Lizzie lately, mentioning that Lizzie has disappeared recently. Eugene tries to hide his distress over this.
Although Lady Tippins considers herself one of the highest-class members of society, she still takes an interest in what’s going on with Lizzie. For all the comfort of upper-class life, the affairs of lower-class people are still interesting to Lady Tippins, perhaps because she can look down on them or perhaps because they seem to offer excitement and authenticity that’s missing from upper-class life.
Themes
At one point during the breakfast, Sophronia speaks quietly with Twemlow. Making Twemlow swear to keep a secret, Sophronia tells Twemlow that she and Alfred have hatched a plan to get Georgiana to marry Fledgeby. Although Sophronia stands to make money (seemingly due to an arrangement with Fledgeby), she now regrets her actions and wants to stop the plan. She believes Twemlow has the power to stop it if he exposes it to Georgiana’s father, Mr. Podsnap. Sophronia suddenly changes the subject as Alfred approaches them.
Up until this point, Sophronia and Alfred have often seemed to be two sides of the same coin, with each motivated by similarly greedy desires. But in this passage, Sophronia distinguishes herself, putting Georgiana’s wellbeing above her own plan to make money. Sophronia’s change of heart is an example of how characters can change for the better, a sentiment in the story that balances out the more cynical idea that many people at all levels of London society are greedy and will never change.
Themes
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