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Book 4, Chapter 12
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
Bella is surprised to see Boffin in such a jovial mood. Boffin tells Henerietty to explain everything to Bella. Henerietty asks Bella to guess Rokesmith’s real name. She gives hints, and Bella realizes at last that she means it’s John Harmon. Bella doesn’t believe it, so Henerietty keeps explaining. In the meantime, someone brings Bella’s infant daughter to the house. Henerietty tells the story of how John wanted to reveal his identity, but how Bella seemed so contented that John didn’t want to change anything.
By revealing his true identity to Bella, John demonstrates that he trusts her to keep loving him no matter what his identity is. The fact that he hid his identity for noble reasons—to avoid disturbing his happy life with Bella—makes him different from the other characters in the novel who fake identities with the specific purpose of trying to manipulate another person. In a neat bit of plotting, Bella and John Harmon end up marrying through their own free will, not because of old Mr. Harmon’s will.
Themes
After hearing the story, there’s one part that doesn’t make sense to Bella: She doesn’t understand how Boffin seemed to become such a miser but isn’t anymore. Boffin confesses that he was only pretending to become a miser as part of a scheme to preserve John’s secrecy and to make sure Bella really loved him, not just money. Boffin also needed to deal with Silas Wegg’s blackmail.
Some critics, both in Dickens’s time and now, considered the twist that Boffin was only pretending to be a miser to be unrealistic and perhaps inconsistent with his actions in earlier chapters. Still, regardless of Boffin or Dickens’s intention, it really was Boffin’s miserly behavior that inspired Bella to think beyond money and to ultimately accept John’s love.
Themes
John Harmon, who now leaves his Rokesmith identity behind forever, leads Bella to a nursery that Boffin and Henerietty have built in the house.
The nursery represents new life—not just for John and Bella with their new baby, but also for John himself, as he is reborn as John Harmon again.
Themes
