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Page 24
There is no first person narrator in Our Mutual Friend , as there is in David Coppperfield and Great Expectations, although we are given an interior monologue as John Harmon recounts his own near death by drowning. However the novel is framed by Mortimer Lightwood's stories: he tells the story of "The Man from Somewhere," John Harmon, at the beginning of the novel; his story of Eugene Wrayburn's marriage to Lizzie Hexam horrifies the "society" to whom he recounts this tale at the end. The narrator/hero role that is central to David Copperfield is shared in Our Mutual Friend among Harmon, Wrayburn, and Lightwood. The roles of the heroines are altered from the earlier novels as well. The Agnes who has been associated with stained glass windows becomes Lizzie Hexam, daughter of the water rat Gaffer Hexam; and the cruel Estella becomes the willful, mercenary Bella Wilfer. Dickens is reworking his themes and relationships from the earlier novels here, particularly those themes he explored in the novels written from the first person point of view, the more autobiographical novels.
Like David Copperfield, Lizzie Hexam has much to be grateful for in her sordid background. David's experiences on the streets allow him to take the measure of evil; Lizzie's sordid work with her father gives her the strength and the experience literally to save Eugene Wrayburn from drowning. As a result, Eugene is empowered to renounce the false society and indolent existence of his former self and to be redeemed by Lizzie's love. Bella Wilfer sees her own selfishness and vanity played out in Noddy Boffins's pretended miserliness, and sacrifices her great expectations in defense of John Harmon. In so doing, Bella demonstrates herself as worthy of Harmon's love, just as Eugene demonstrates his worth of Lizzie's love in repudiating the society he had been surrounded by.
