My students' essay about our mutual friend.

1. UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS
FACULDADE DE LETRAS – CENEX
ENGLISH INTERMEDIATE III
Teacher: Adriana Zardini Date: 06/12/08
Students: Gustavo, Patrícia and Sueli
Book: Our Mutual Friend
Author: Charles Dickens
About the author:
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, in Lanport Portsmouth, in Hampshire,
the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at
Portsmouth, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Barrow, 1789–1863). When he was five, the family
moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street,
Camden Town in London. Our Mutual Friend (written in the years 1864–65) is the last novel
completed by Charles Dickens and is in many ways one of his most sophisticated works,
combining deep psychological insight with rich social analysis.
About the book:
A young man is on his way to receive his inheritance, which, according to his father's
will, he can claim only if he marries Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom he has never
met. However, before he can arrive, a body is found in the river and identified as him. The money
passes on, instead, to the working-class Boffins, and the effects spread throughout various
corners of London society.
A rich misanthropic miser who has made his fortune from London's rubbish dies,
estranged from all except his faithful employees Mr and Mrs Boffin. By his will, his fortune goes to
his son John Harmon, who is to return from South Africa to claim it, on condition that he marries a
woman he has not met, Miss Bella Wilfer.
Before the son and heir can claim his inheritance, he goes missing, presumed
drowned, at the end of his journey from South Africa to London. A body is found in the Thames by
Gaffer Hexam, a waterman who makes his living from retrieving corpses and robbing them of
valuables before rendering them to the authorities. The body is identified from papers in the

2. pockets as that of the heir, John Harmon. Present at the identification is a mysterious young man,
who gives his name as Julius Handford and then disappears.
By the terms of the miser's will, the whole estate then devolves upon Mr and Mrs
Boffin, good hearted people who wish to enjoy it for themselves and to share it with others. They
take the disappointed bride of the drowned heir, Miss Wilfer, into their household, and treat her as
their pampered child and heiress. They also accept an offer from Julius Handford, now going
under the name of John Rokesmith, to serve as confidential secretary and man of business, at no
salary. He uses this position to watch and learn everything about the Boffins, Miss Wilfer, and the
aftershock of the drowning of the heir John Harmon.
Gaffer Hexam, who found the body, is accused of murdering John Harmon by a fellow-
waterman, Rogue Riderhood, who is bitter at having been cast off as Hexam's partner on the river
and who covets the large reward offered in relation to the murder. Hexam is shunned by his
fellows on the river, and excluded from The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, a public house
frequented by them on the river. Hexam's young son, the clever but priggish Charley Hexam,
leaves his father's house in order to better himself at school, and train to be a schoolmaster,
encouraged by his sister, the beautiful Lizzie Hexam. Meanwhile, Lizzie stays with her father, to
whom she is devoted.
Before Riderhood can claim the reward for his false allegation against Hexam, Hexam
is found drowned himself. Lizzie Hexam becomes the assistant of a doll's dressmaker. But she
has caught the eye of Eugene Wrayburn, who noticed her when accompanying his friend, the
Harmon solicitor Mortimer Lightwood, in pursuit of Gaffer Hexam upon the accusation of
Riderhood. Wrayburn falls in love with her. However, he has a violent rival in Bradley Headstone,
the schoolmaster of Charley Hexam, who is set on marrying her, and believes that Wrayburn will
make her his mistress but not his wife. Lizzie Hexam flees both men, getting work up river outside
London.
Lizzie is thereby introduced to the Boffins and to Bella Wilfer. But Lizzie has been
tracked down by Eugene Wrayburn and also by Bradley Headstone. Headstone violently assaults
Wrayburn and leaves him for dead, but Lizzie finds and rescues him. Wrayburn, thinking he will
die anyway, marries Lizzie, in order to save her reputation. When he survives, he is glad that this
has brought him into a loving marriage.
Rokesmith has clearly fallen in love with Bella Wilfer, but she cannot bear to accept
him, determining that she will marry only for money. Mr Boffin appears to be corrupted by his
wealth, and becomes a miser. He also begins to treat his secretary Rokesmith with contempt and
cruelty. This rouses the sympathy of Bella Wilfer, and both she and Rokesmith are turned out of
the Boffin household. They marry, and live happily although poor.
Meanwhile, Bradley Headstone has tried to put the blame (for his murderous assault
of Wrayburn) on Rogue Riderhood, now working as a lock gate keeper, by dressing in similar
clothes when doing the deed. Riderhood realises this, and is also aware of the assault, and
blackmails him. Headstone and Riderhood wrestle, and both fall into the canal and drown.
John Rokesmith is, in fact, the missing presumed drowned heir, John Harmon. He
had been robbed of his clothes and possessions by the man later found drowned, and wrongly
identified as him. Rokesmith/Harmon has been maintaining his alias in order to see Bella Wilfer

3. before committing to marry her as required by the terms of his father's will. Now that she has
married him believing him to be poor, he can throw off his disguise.
He does so, and it is revealed that Mr Boffin's ill treatment of him and his miserliness
was part of a scheme to test Miss Wilfer's motives and affections.
Finally Mr and Mrs Eugene Wrayburn were happy and Mr and Mrs John Harmon were
happy too.