Our Mutual Friend: Paradox 2 key examples

Dickens’s remark is a clever twist on the age-old saying that “love is blind”—namely, that the feeling can obscure any fault in its object. By personifying love as a “watchman,” he assigns human-like qualities to an otherwise abstract feeling and presents a paradox. Love sees and doesn’t, a contradiction that emphasizes the emotion’s complexity. As if to demonstrate these difficulties, the novel constructs an elaborate pair of love triangles. Eugene Wrayburn and Bradley Headstone each vie for Lizzie’s affections. But Bradley Headstone himself gets pursued by Miss Peecher as well. Our Mutual Friend unravels a tangle of unmet desires and attractions.

Combining love’s attempted vigilance with its partiality adds a deeper meaning to “blindness.” Love is not only “blind,” but “blinds”—it thwarts Miss Peecher from finding any fault in a violent, “mechanical” villain just as it prevents Headstone from appreciating gestures of true affection. Love creates a tunnel vision that denies both from actually overcoming their romantic obsessions. Ignoring a lover’s flaws is one kind of blindness; but the novel shows how continuing to pursue that flawed lover may be an even greater form of blindness. By leading them ever deeper in their misguided romantic pursuits, love only further blinds its victims.

The moment presents an apparent contradiction: everyone in the bar leaps “at once in action,” and “lends a hand, and a heart and soul.” The sense of camaraderie crescendos as all hands work to sustain the “spark of life.” The habitues at the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters work desperately to revive Riderhood, even as they reject the crude gracelessness that he represents. They pity Riderhood when he is weak but distance themselves from him once he gets back onto his feet. The doctor and the others “cool” as Riderhood “warms.” This moment deals a complex yet understandable mix of humanitarian concern and personal disapproval.

The episode bears relevance to some of the novel’s larger dynamics. Riderhood’s recovery triangulates with the other characters to create foil-like comparisons: Gaffer drowns with no one to save him. John Rokesmith fares similarly, though he somehow survives. The struggle between charity and aversion also repeats itself within the novel’s other plot strands. The Boffins’ hefty generosity attracts freeloaders and Silas Wegg’s bitter vengeance. The motivations of goodwill and humanity sometimes stand at odds against deeper selfish interests.