Our Mutual Friend Characters

Dead Man WalkingJohn Harmon is a complicated cat, which stems from (paging Dr. Freud) his strained relationship with his daddy. For starters, Harmon's dad basically disowned him when John defended...

The Spoiled BratIt's safe to say that Bella Wilfer is tough to like at the beginning of this novel. She's shallow, she's proud, and she's super entitled. Yes, she has a point when she complains abo...

Some people might accuse Charles Dickens of being too idealistic and naïve when he talks about poor people. After all, some of the poor characters in his novels are incredibly beloved by readers (...

Mr. Boffin kind of like Winnie the Pooh: he's bumbling and naïve, but also loyal and kind. The whole reason Old Man Harmon leaves his money to Mr. Boffin (and Mrs. Boffin) is because Boffin was al...

Gaffer is not pleasant guy to be around. Not only does he makes his living by hauling dead bodies out of the Thames River (which: gross); he's so insecure about his lack of education that he forbid...

When it comes to being raised by Gaffer Hexam, Lizzie is like a flower that has grown out of a compost heap. Despite all the terrible treatment she gets from her dad, Lizzie is so kind that she rem...

The Veneerings are so two-dimensional they might as well be made of cardboard. As Dickens tells us early in the book, Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were brand-new people in a brand-new house in a brand-ne...

Mr. Twemlow is a good example of a man who means well but is too terrified to go against the general opinion of British society in any way. His biggest concern in life is whether he is the oldest f...

By the end of the book, Eugene Wrayburn is one of our heroes. But, like Bella, this guy doesn't come across as very likeable in early chapters. For starters, Eugene doesn't like working as a lawyer...

Mortimer Lightwood is an interesting cat. Even though the book spends a lot of time with him, he is one of the book's most invisible characters because he's so plain in his appearance and his manne...

When we first meet Mr. Venus, the narrator of Our Mutual Friend takes pleasure in making us wonder what this man's job could possibly be. It starts us off with teasing descriptions, saying,His eyes...

Bradley Headstone is a respectable, educated man who does a lot of service for his community as a schoolmaster. Yay, Bradley. But on the other hand, he is hopelessly insecure, awkward, and entitled...

The first thing we learn about Jenny Wren is that she was born with underdeveloped legs and a crooked spine. But in spite of her disadvantage, she thinks of herself as being no different from any o...

Along with Silas Wegg and Bradley Headstone, Mr. Fledgeby is one of the serious villains in this book. He is a moneylender, for starters, which means that he loans people money and expects them to...

We don't really know a whole lot about Sophronia Lammle apart from the fact that she's a schemer who grows a conscience… and then returns to being a schemer again. We first learn about her when s...

Like several characters in this book, Alfred Lammle is a no-good scoundrel whose only purpose in life is to serve his self-interest. Even after he realizes that his new wife Sophronia isn't rich li...

Poor Mr. Riah is the only non-Christian man in this book. And in the world of 19th-century Britain, non-Christians (and especially Jewish people) were almost considered a separate species. Mr. Fled...