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Book 2, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Bad Child:
Our Mutual Friend’s irony gives its characters big shoes to fill. During Eugene’s visit to Lizzie’s in Book 2, Chapter 2, Jenny prepares for Mr. Doll:
‘Well, it’s Saturday night,’ she returned, ‘and my child’s coming home. And my child is a troublesome bad child, and costs me a world of scolding. I would rather you didn't see my child.’
‘A doll?’ said Eugene, not understanding, and looking for an explanation.
But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, ‘Her father,’ he delayed no longer. He took his leave immediately.
Jenny’s “child” internalizes an ironic if initially confusing role reversal: the child with the lame leg ends up caring for the father who struggles to even keep his money in his pockets. Hardly an adult yet, she must discipline her own alcoholic parent. In a novel that makes children of parents, and parents of children, Jenny’s responsibilities raise awareness of the difficult realities of lower-class children in this upside-down world. They die, like Johnny, leave for school, or tend to their parents. Jenny’s relationship with her befuddled father mirrors that of her own housemate, Lizzie, who stays behind to tend Gaffer Hexam.
By giving his children greater sense than the adults, Dickens invests them with the power to correct and outlive the previous generation’s failings. Pleasant Riderhood outlives her father’s greedy snitching, just as John Harmon reverses Mr. Harmon’s mean meagerness. Books 3 and 4 of Our Mutual Friend follow an arc of redemption. Respectively named “A long lane” and “A turning,” they subvert the proverbial saying that “a long lane has no turning”—namely, that bad situations do not get better. In the next generation the novel finds a literal “turning” and a source for new hope.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Bella's Rejection:
For a novel organized around John Harmon’s quest for his inheritance, Bella’s rejection of his marriage proposal may be the work’s prime irony. After revealing to the reader that he is John Harmon in disguise, John Rokesmith offers his hand to his landlord’s daughter but gets dealt a brutal put-down in Book 2, Chapter 13:
‘Yes. I appeal to you, sir,’ proceeded Bella with increasing spirit, ‘not to pursue me. I appeal to you not to take advantage of your position in this house to make my position in it distressing and disagreeable. I appeal to you to discontinue your habit of making your misplaced attentions as plain to Mrs. Boffin as to me.’
‘Have I done so?’
‘I should think you have,’ replied Bella. ‘In any case it is not your fault if you have not, Mr. Rokesmith.’
‘I hope you are wrong in that impression. I should be very sorry to have justified it. I think I have not. For the future there is no apprehension. It is all over.’
‘I am much relieved to hear it,’ said Bella. ‘I have far other views in life, and why should you waste your own?’
Rokesmith’s humiliation exploits ironies situational and dramatic. Bella—unaware of his true identity—scoffs at his marriage proposal, finding him too far below her newly elevated status. As a young lady exalted to fortune’s dizzying heights, her “other views in life” exclude union with a lowly household secretary. But by revealing Rokesmith’s identity to the reader, Dickens manages to secure his audience’s emotional investment. This secretly disclosed knowledge only makes the mis-recognition all the more painful. The reader, who “knows,” cannot help but feel a prick of indignation on Rokesmith’s behalf.
Readerly secrets notwithstanding, Bella’s rejection is as much an instance of situational irony. Through her needy gripes and self-regard, Dickens reveals the destructive consequences of material greed. Bella’s single-minded pursuit of “money, money, money” in this scene actually leads her to overlook the novel’s wealthiest man. Her gold-digging spirit blindsides and does not benefit her. Bella’s unmerited arrogance closes her off from the true sources of wealth around her. By emphasizing Bella’s shortcomings with these double ironies, the novel sets the stage for her spiritual development.
Related Themes:
