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Foreshadowing
Book 3, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Of Misers and Men:
Bearing a new “pile of wollumes” in Book 3, Chapter 6, Mr. Boffin unexpectedly intrudes on Silas Wegg’s meeting with Mr. Venus one evening. What follows is a frame story of misers:
(Here Mr. Wegg repeated ‘secret hoards,’ and pegged his comrade again.)
‘One of Mr. Dancer's richest escretoires was found to be a dung-heap in the cowhouse; a sum but little short of two thousand five hundred pounds was contained in this rich piece of manure; and in an old jacket, carefully tied, and strongly nailed down to the manger, in bank notes and gold were found five hundred pounds more.’
(Here Mr. Wegg's wooden leg started forward under the table, and slowly elevated itself as he read on.)
‘Several bowls were discovered filled with guineas and half-guineas; and at different times on searching the corners of the house they found various parcels of bank notes. Some were crammed into the crevices of the wall;’
(Here Mr. Venus looked at the wall.)
Read aloud to Mr. Boffin and Mr. Venus, these stories within a story set up a grand display of miserliness. There are tales about brothers who hide their fortunes from each other, millionaires who hole themselves in decaying buildings, and pinchpennies who stuff coins in the walls of their houses. Almost as comic as the stories themselves are Mr. Venus and Silas Wegg’s reactions to them. Dickens’s parenthetical remarks offer bursts of dry humor, commenting on the two conspirators’ greedy bewilderment. Taking a page from these absurd stories, Mr. Venus glances at the wall. Silas Wegg can hardly restrain his wooden leg and nearly topples in his chair near the end of the storytelling session. The novel’s frame stories make for droll comedy.
Mr. Venus and Silas Wegg could be forgiven for anticipating riches, though. The frame stories draw deliberately misleading parallels between the misers and Mr. Boffin, who has trimmed his expenses and rummaged through dust mounds in greedy search for treasure. It tempts both reader and the conspirators to expect caches of treasure scattered throughout the Bower. But these stories amount to a wickedly clever misdirection—as revealed by the novel’s conclusion, Mr. Boffin is only pretending miserliness and does not even own the Harmons' wealth. Far from informing or explaining, these frame stories merely play an elaborate trick.
In a novel that begins with a frame story of sorts—Mortimer Lightwood shares the Harmon family’s tragedy—these miser tales demonstrate the perils of fiction. Mr. Venus and Silas Wegg’s over-reliance on stories lead them towards comically mistaken impressions; Our Mutual Friend, then, performs an implicit critique of its own fictional status. Amid a world where appearances and realities often fail to align, the novel illustrates storytelling’s ability to enlighten and lead its listeners astray.
Related Themes:
