SOURCE: “The Coherence of Our Mutual Friend,” in Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 15, No. 3, Fall, 1985, pp. 234-43.

In the following essay, Beiderwell explores the distinct writing styles Dickens uses to describe the two different social worlds represented in Our Mutual Friend.

The first two chapters of Our Mutual Friend introduce two apparently distinct social worlds. The novel opens in the dark, primitive, and dangerous world of Gaffer Hexam. The second chapter introduces the unbearably bright, new, and insular world of the Veneerings. Dickens allows the two chapters to stand with no explicit connection until the last sentence of the second chapter. Mortimer receives a message which allows him to close his story of the man from somewhere: “Man's drowned!”¹ But even this link to Gaffer's hunt serves to emphasize the separateness of these two worlds. The corpse in chapter one is an actuality. For Gaffer or Riderhood it...