Our Mutual Friend Book 1, Part 3, Chapter 10

A Marriage Contract

• We look back in on the Veneerings' house, where a wedding is about to happen between a guy named Alfred Lammle and a woman named Sophronia. These names, sheesh!
• Since Sophronia has no family, there is no one to give her away at the wedding. Mr. Veneering nominates Twemlow for the job, and Twemlow nervously accepts.
• For the next few pages, Dickens describes the wedding and all the characters present at it. He uses this as an opportunity to make fun of people from " high" society who think they're cool just because they hang with the in-crowd.
• Everything seems to go well with the wedding. But on the honeymoon, Alfred and Sophronia are in for a couple of big surprises.
• It looks like each of them thought that the other one was rich. But in reality, both of them have no money to their names. It sounds like Mr. Veneering has had a lot to do with making each of them think the wrong thing. The guy just wanted to play matchmaker, so he made up stories for each of them.