Our Mutual Friend
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Our Mutual Friend (written in the years 1864–65) is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining psychological insight with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life" but is also about human values. In the opening chapters a body is found in the Thames and identified as John Harmon, a young man recently returned to London to receive his inheritance. Were he alive, his father's will would require him to marry Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom he had never met. Instead, the money passes to the working-class Boffins, and the effects spread into various corners of London society.
Georgiana Podsnap
- Georgiana Podsnap – daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap; portrayed as very sheltered, shy, trusting, and naïve and, as such, is taken advantage of by the more manipulative upper-class characters such as Fledgeby and the Lammles who scheme to “befriend” her in order to take her money; courted by Fledgeby through Alfred Lammle, though not with honourable intentions, and nearly finds herself trapped in a marriage with Fledgeby until Sophronia Lammle suffers a change of heart.
