#lizziehexam

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Charles Dickens: Societal Problems in “Our Mutual Friend”

Note on the text: Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens published by Walter J Black

Charles Dickens is one of the best novelists that the world has ever known. His knowledge of nature is so deep and so penetrating that it rings true even now. 

He was a much better observer of human nature than he gets credit for. It has become vogue in recent times to see him as something of a caricaturist who only created characters that were one dimensional and over the top. 

But look at the way he introduces the characters of Lizzie Hexam and her father Jesse, who are sailing on the Thames, to us. How he tells us so much about these characters with so little text: “Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface by reason of the slime and ooze with which it was covered, and in its sodden state, this boat and the two figures in it obviously were doing that they often did, and were seeking what they often sought” (2). With only a few words we know instantly that they are professionals and the image that comes to mind from these few words is as rich and detailed as if they had been given a paragraph’s worth of adjectives. 

Again Dickens shows his genius in describing the minute details of human nature in the way that Jesse instinctively knows that Lizzie has noticed something on the river that he hasn’t: “What ails you?’ [asked] the man, immediately aware of [Lizzie’s change in attitude]. ‘I see nothing afloat’” (3).

It should not be a surprise therefore that someone who noticed the smallest details of human behavior, was also able to notice some of the broader details too. What Dickens seems especially interested in is the effect that education and money have on people. One of the things that he points out over and over again is how people who are in the privileged class often don’t notice how privileged they are and they aren’t aware of just how valuable those privileges are. People on the outside on the other hand are acutely aware of just how valuable those privileges are. Those who are educated, for example, don’t know just how much of a gift education is because “no one who can read looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like someone who cannot” (24). Lizzie is a poor girl who, as she tells her younger brother Charley, “would be very glad to be able to read real books” and who “feels her want of education very much” (40). She knows what the value of a good education is, which is why she sends Charley off to school later even though that means that she might not see him again. Contrast that with the image of the Veneering family who, although they are very educated and surround themselves with the crème de la crème of society, care so little about being educated that “any one who has anything to tell generally tells it to anyone else in preference” (18). These are the people who have the power and the privilege, and yet they cannot even recognize or appreciate the privilege that they have. 

Along with access to education comes access to higher paying jobs, and all power that money has access to. Dickens was acutely aware of the power that money wields in both the micro and macro scale. In terms of the micro scale, look at how Eugene describes the way in which his father found him a woman to marry to his friend: “My respected father has found, down in the parental neighborhood, a wife for his generally not well respected son’. ‘With some money of course?’ ‘With some money, of course, or else he would not have found her” (198). A rogue like Eugene, without any money, is intolerable and unmarriable. But a rogue with money is a different story altogether. 

Dickens is also aware however of the role that money plays on the macro scale. Just look at the way he describes what a gentleman with shares, the 19th century equivalent of a hedge fund manager, does: 

He goes in an amateurish, condescending way into the City, attends meetings of Directors and has to do traffic in shares. As is well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to do in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners, have Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of Directors in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. Does he have any principles? Shares. What squeezes him into parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never achieved anything of himself in success, never originated anything, never produced anything! Sufficient answer to all: Shares. Oh mighty Shares! (154-155).

No where is the difference between the haves and the havenots in this book more evident than in a conversation that Mr. Podsnap has with an unnamed gentleman at a dinner party. They are discussing a report which has just appeared in the newspaper regarding six people who have died that week, in the streets, of starvation. Initially Mr. Podsnap says that he doesn’t believe that that actually happens to which the gentleman replies that they 

must take it as proved because [of] the Inquests and Registrar’s returns. ‘Then it was their own fault’ said Mr. Podsnap. . . . The man of meek demeanor intimated that truly it would seem [that] starvation had been forced upon the culprits in question. . . [and that] they would rather not have [starved to death]. . . if it had been agreeable to all parties. ‘There is not’, said Mr. Podsnap flushing angrily, ‘there is not another country in the whole world, sir, where so noble a provision of the poor is made as in this country’. The meek man was willing to concede that, but perhaps it rendered the matter even worse, as showing that there must be something appallingly wrong somewhere [in the system]. . . [and] wouldn’t it be just as well to try and figure out where? ‘Ah!’ said Mr. Podsnap. ‘Easy to saw ‘somewhere’; not so easy to say ‘where’! But I see what you are driving at. I knew it from the first. Centralization. No. Never. Never with my consent. [It’s] not English’. . . . [The meek man had no] favorite ‘ization’ that he knew of. But he was certainly more staggered by these terrible occurrences than he was by names of however many syllables. Might he ask if dying of destitution and neglect was necessarily English?. . . . [Might there be a way to ensure that the] laws [regarding the poor] were being properly administered? (190-191). 

At this point Mr. Podsnap quotes Scripture by saying that the poor will always be with us and cautions the young man to not attempt the impossible by feuding with God. When the young man attempts to say that he is not trying to go against God but is instead just trying to help his fellow man Mr. Podsnap interrupts him by saying that he 

must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to my feelings. It is repugnant to my feelings. I have said that I do not admit these things. I have also said that if they do occur (not that I admit it) the fault lies with the sufferers themselves. It is not for me’- Mr. Podsnap pointed at ‘me’ forcibly as [if to add] by implication that it may be well for ‘you’- ‘it is not for me to impugn the works of Providence. I know better than that, I trust, and I mentioned what the intentions of Providence are. Besides’, said Mr. Podsnap flushing. . . with a consciousness of personal affront, ‘the subject is a disagreeable one. I will go so far as to say that it is an odious one. It is not one to be introduced among our wives and young ones, and I’, he finished with a flourish of his arms than anything [else] could, ‘And I remove it from existence’” (191-192). 

Doesn’t Mr. Podsnap remind you of people in recent times who, when they were told of a tragedy that was happening nationwide to members of an under privileged class, initially denied that anything was happening, and then, once they could no longer deny the fact, proceeded to blame the members of that group for their predicament? People who even after they realized that they could not blame those people for the predicament which they found themselves in, said that everyone should just simply celebrate the progress that the country has made and stop talking about it because they were tired of having the conversation and it was making them uncomfortable? Does this remind you of anyone? No? Just me then I guess. . . .

Not only does society despise members of the lower class, but it scoffs at the attempts that many people of class make in order to be able to enjoy the benefits that are being offered to members of the upper class. When Jesse Hexam is being derided for being a waterman and something of a grave robber, he retorts that it is better to rob a dead man who has no need of money than it is to rob a live one which is what a lot of other people do. Similarly people condemn Bella for wanting to marry a rich man, but who could blame her? Given the way that society treats poor people, who could blame her for saying that she “hate[s] and detest[s] being poor” and that because she cannot make money, beg for money, or steal money, she is resolved to marry into it (435)? But that is the difference between the haves and the havenots. The haves make the rules and the havenots have to live by them. The haves live in a world where they have privileges that they are not even aware they have, while the havenots must struggle to get by in a world that seems stacked against them. 

Charles Dickens was a very perceptive writer, and much of what he said about 19th century England still applies to America today. History doesn’t always repeat but it does often rhyme. It’s strange to know that people like Podsnap still exist today. We have a long way to go, but it’s important to keep fighting so that future generations don’t have to keep dealing with the same problems that we do. We must keep fighting.