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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Our Mutual Friend takes place in 19th-century London and its surrounding suburbs, drawing upon one of Dickens’s strengths. The author was famed for his evocative sketches of London, and this novel showcases his descriptive powers at their peak. Our Mutual Friend traverses the city’s kaleidoscopic terrain, from the Veneerings’ “bran-new” mansion to the squalor of Covent Garden’s cabbage-like inhabitants. The spheres of the rich and poor sit just blocks away but may well stand worlds apart, disparities that speak to the sharp inequalities of Dickens’s own time.
Through its account of place, the novel chronicles the social consequences of England’s capitalist rise. The Bower’s dust heap—one of the work’s primary locations—reflects the nation’s turn towards industrial development. Mounds of waste and rubble like Mr. Harmon’s could be sold for construction, often earnings its owners a fortune. Trash is transformed into money, an idea that bears figurative relevance to the changing social order. As it expanded towards industry and imperialism, English society empowered a new class of elites and frauds: the Veneerings flaunt their wealth while the Lammles make hollow performance of their wealth.
Though Dickens restricts the novel to England, Our Mutual Friend offers a glimpse into an increasingly globalized world. John Harmon returns from Belgium, the Veneerings retreat to Calais, and Eugene Wrayburn briefly contemplates moving “abroad.” The novel’s references to distant realms suggest England’s increasingly cosmopolitan character. It alludes to the country’s imperialist project, too. Mr. Lammle and his friends gamble their fortunes in the stock markets, which are directly tied to operations like the Dutch East India Company. More unsettlingly, Mr. Venus’s collection of specimens includes a “Hindoo baby in a bottle.” Dickens encodes a troubling violence within his most ordinary descriptions of place and people. Through its attentiveness to place, Our Mutual Friend reflects its time and responds to it.
Related Themes:
