Our Mutual Friend

Of the 15 novels of Charles Dickens, I have now read 12 of them at least once. With Our Mutual Friend now in the books, so to speak, I only have Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood left to read for the first time, although my reread list is long. I may read Great Expectations next...just because!

I enjoyed Our Mutual Friend immensely, and found it quite different from the others that I have recently read. I thought the plot extremely interesting, and the themes of identity, rebirth, resurrection, and trial by water to be fascinating, giving the novel a richly layered canvas. I know the conventional lit crit  on the novel focuses on Dickens lambasting London society for being greedy, money grubbers, which he does, but I found the rebirth angle stronger.

The basic idea is that John Harmon's father dies, leaving his son his entire estate, with some very severe conditions. I can't talk about the main plot any more than that without giving away the whole thing as Our Mutual Friend, aka the man from somewhere, takes on a few different guises as the plot unfolds.

Dickens really goes macabre with this novel, which makes it absolutely delightful in a pretty grotesque way. The Harmon fortune stems from Harmon senior investing in dust--he sifts through debris, and collects stuff that he finds to sell, leaving behind a fortune as well as mountains of dust. As a neat counterpoint to mining dust for treasure, the Hexam family makes a subsistence living from dredging the Thames at night, mostly pulling out bodies of suicides and murders, and emptying their pockets before turning them over to the authorities. The London of Our Mutual Friend is definitely not a pleasant place.

I really enjoyed comparing the various father/daughter combinations.

• Lizzie and Gaffer Hexam - Gaffer is a rough old riverman, who pulls up bodies, while his beautiful, sweet, loving daughter (typical Dickens heroine) rows him nightly as he searches for booty. Lizzie knows that Gaffer loves her, but he doesn't want her to learn to read for fear she will leave him and he needs her to help him in his work.
• Bella and R.W. Wilfer - R.W. is a cherubic, sweet, hen-pecked clerk who absolutely dotes on his beautiful, but spoiled daughter, Bella. I found Bella to be such a refreshing heroine--she is selfish and mercenary, but circumstances contrive to teach her how to overcome these characteristics and let her true, lovely nature shine through. Bella teases her father in a loving way, confides in him, scolds him gently, and  they love each other very much.
• Pleasant and Rogue Riderhood - Rogue is a former partner of Gaffer, and is even rougher than Gaffer. Pleasant is his much abused daughter, who runs a shady pawnshop and specializes in swindling sailors on leave...but she too has her good side, which Dickens allows to triumph over her upbringing. Rogue backhands Pleasant regularly and they are at war most of the time, but she feels she owes him her obedience and fealty.
• Jenny Wren and Mr. Dolls and Mr. Riah - Jenny is truly one of Dickens most bizarre characters. She is a very young girl, who is lame, looks after her drunken father (whom the narrator refers to as "Mr. Dolls"), whom she calls  her child, and sews dresses for dolls in posh Bond Street to make her meager living. She is quasi adopted by Mr. Riah, whom she calls her fairy godmother, who assumes role of parent to this child who was born old. 
• Note about Mr. Riah - he is Dickens' apology and answer to the criticism he received for the very anti-Semitic portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist. Mr. Riah is Jewish and is a front for the heartless money-lender, Fledgeby, who takes advantage of the stereotype and makes Riah his scapegoat. I loved Mr. Riah--one of the few gentle and gentlemanly characters in the entire book.
• Georgiana Podsnap and John Podsnap - really only minor characters but she is sheltered and is very much a pawn of her rich father, who will make a good match for her, regardless of how miserable she will end up. Georgiana is starved for love and affection, and her father hasn't an inkling that she will go off the rails if he doesn't start paying attention to her.

I also absolutely adored the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin - they are sweet, original, and golden in their own way, and are really the guardian angels of the novels. They are caretakers, faithful and true, with a naivete, energy, and zest for life that I absolutely loved.

I have downloaded all six parts of the mini-series from 1998 to watch on my upcoming airplane trips. Hope it's good!

Our Mutual Friend is my 19th century classic for the 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge, and it is the first of this summer's Big Book Challenge.

Top Ten ALL TIME Favorite Victorian Novels

I have this set of Victorian Women Author stamps, which I treasure!

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is Top Ten ALL TIME Favorite books in X Genre.  Since I love Victorian novels, my only issue was limiting the list to 10.  The last one is not strictly a novel, but a literary bio, one of the first of its kind, but it reads like a novel.

I ended up limiting my list of books to those I had read at least twice, though I don't think there's a book on here I haven't read at least three times.  And, it had to be one that I plan to reread. After all, favorite means favorite!

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot
2. David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
3. The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
4. Vanity Fair, by William Thackeray
5. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
6. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
7. North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell
8. Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell
9. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
10. The Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Elizabeth Gaskell

Visit The Broke and the Bookish for other Top Ten genre lists.

Sadly, I couldn't find a Wilkie Collins Stamp

Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant

I've been hearing about Miss Marjoribanks off and on for awhile now on other classics-loving book blogs, and when the GoodReads Victorians group announced that it would be a group read this fall, I jumped at the chance to read along.

Miss Marjoribanks is by the prolific Margaret Oliphant.  Published in 1865, it is in her Carlingford series, which she modeled after Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire series.  Carlingford is a mythical town in England, and the series chronicles the lives and fortunes of various inhabitants--sometimes focusing on one neighborhood and the mores of it, and sometimes on another.  Carlingford is, according to Oliphant, "essentially a quiet place" with "no trade, no manufactures, no anything in particular."

Miss Marjoribanks tells the story of Lucilla Marjoribanks, only daughter of the town's doctor.  Her mother dies early in the book, and as soon as Lucilla finishes with her schooling she returns to Carlingford to care for her father and manage the town's society.

Lucilla is a completely unique heroine--I've never encountered anyone quite like Lucilla, either in the flesh or in print or on the stage.  She's a cross between Austen's Emma Woodhouse, Stella Poste (from Cold Comfort Farm), and Elle Woods (from Legally Blonde).  She has a super-abundance of self-confidence, self-consciously runs shallow (yes, there is nothing more important than getting the exact shade of green wallpaper for her drawing room so as to complement her complexion), loves to be in charge and should be (no one else comes close to her management abilities), has blinders on when it comes to her own heart, but is supremely big-hearted.

The narration is charming--ironic, indulgent, and self-conscious--very similar to Trollope in this, but thankfully without Trollope's tendency to insert lectures on ecclesiastical law and form.  Easy to read, but long-winded at times--after all Oliphant wrote for the money (she was a widow and had children and extended family to support) and spun out the story in serialization for much longer than she needed to.  That said, it was fun to read and I only found it tiresome occasionally.  The introduction to the Penguin Classics edition that I read described the tone of Oliphant and Miss Marjoribanks in particular as sardonic--perhaps I took it too much at face value, but I felt it more ironic than cynical.

There are some wonderful other characters in Miss Marjoribanks as well.  Tom, Lucilla's cousin, could've been a model for Georgette Heyer's scattered-but-enthusiastic young lover hero type.  There is a brother-sister combo (Mr. Cavendish and his sister Mrs. Woodburn) who are not fair from Henry and Mary Crawford, although Mrs. Woodburn's thing is to mimic people, which makes her an interesting cross between contemptible and pitiful.  There are a pair of sisters, Rose and Barbara Lake, many rungs down on the social scale from the divine Miss M, who are utterly fascinating to me--the first is a fiery, tiny Pre-Rafaelite artist and the second is a talented singer who just wants a nice wedding.

The novel surprised me many times with its modern feel.  Many of the characters felt much more Edwardian than Victorian, and Lucilla herself freely acknowledged how much better at politics she was than the men she championed.  The men acknowledge this too!

Oliphant's Lucilla is a portrait of a strong, capable female who makes all her own decisions as well as those of the men in her life but is not a shrew (not a trace of Becky Sharp here), or a doormat (nothing of Agnes Wickfield from David Copperfield), or pious (much as I love Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, she can be holier than thou).

Much like Oliphant herself, Lucilla is resourceful, practical, and far-seeing.  I loved spending time with her, which is good because my version clocked in at just under 500 pages.

Miss Marjoribanks is one of the books I read for the Back to the Classics Challenge, and fulfills the category of author new to me.  But not for long, I plan to read more of Oliphant's Carlingford series in 2015!