What the Dickens? Our Mutual Friend (my favourite book ever)

so here we are the time has come the fiyo day of what the Dickens I hope you have enjoyed this glorious two weeks of Dickens please let me know in the comments or you have thought if you have enjoyed it I hope you would have liked it I hope to do more of these star things in the future I really enjoyed doing Jane Austen back in December I've enjoyed this maybe who knows April will bring Avante week we'll have to see but for now it is time to tell you about my favorite Dickens novel my favorite novel of all time this is gonna be a long video guys I love this book so much it is of course the beautiful our mutual friend chapter 1 on the lookout in these times of ours there concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance with two figures in it floated on the 10 that's between Southwark bridge which is at iron and London Bridge which is of stone as an autumn evening was closing in now as you may have noticed I've just been reading our mutual friends from a rather old copy these two are the two volumes of a first edition of our mutual friend this is not mine in fact belongs to my parents because I'll meet your friend as well as being my favourite book is actually it will send my mum's favorite book so these are going to go back downstairs see for my parents shells but I thought it would be a nice opportunity to show you them as with the first editions I have they have photo of beautiful illustrations in there my parents have had these for quite a long time so our mutual friend I first read our mutual friend when I was 14 years old I had actually seen a TV adaptation of it before I read the book are we talking about that adaptation at the end of this video when I was in year 9 at school when I was 13 14 I got into Victorian literature for the first time I saw a TV adaptation of Jane Eyre in something like October when I was in year 9 so would have been a thirteen and a half and I loved it so I read Jane Eyre and then he watched a TV adaptation of north and south and then I read north and south and then I watched and read Pride and Prejudice and then I saw a TV adaptation of Our Mutual Friend because my mum told me was brilliant and then she gave me the book to read and I loved it it is as I said my mum's favorite book and it quickly became my favorite book of all time I read it when I just turned fourteen I'm now not that far off 23 and it is still my favorite book I think it will always be my favorite book no party sentimental reasons for this as I said it's my mum's favorite book and also it was the first Dickens book I read and you know how much I love Dickens so for me the book that made me discover Dickens is always gonna have a really high place in my heart however it's not just sentimental yes I love it and because I love it so much and because it is my favorite book it will probably also be my favorite book because it just is but also it's brilliant it's so good it's amazing I still think actually it is a lot of Dickens's best books and it is definitely my favorite Dombey and son gets close but it doesn't get quite close enough I love our mutual friend so much let me try and explain why so I'll meet your friend opens with two figures on a boat on the River Thames these two figures are a young woman named Hexen and her father Lizzie hexam and her father are not very well off her father gaffer hexam makes his living by pulling dead bodies out of the Thames and claiming their awards for them often also stealing the money they have in their pockets but he collects these dead bodies claims their awards that is how he gets his living as you can already tell it's quite a dog complicated book what a brilliant premise for a novel and at the start of the book gaffer hexam that pull a body out of the Thames and this body is identified as John Harmon now John Harmon was coming back from a long time abroad to claim his fortune after the death of his father his father had made a fortune in dust from rubbish he had huge huge garbage heaps in which he would pay people to filter through looking for jewels and things of any value he would sell them and that is how he would get money as you can already tell it's a book with a lot of really complicated brave the themes but don't Harmon on his way back to England to claim the fortune of his father seems to have been murdered which leaves this big question hanging in the air who does the Harmon fortune go to dealing with this issue our two lawyers maschmann Lightwood and his friend Eugene Wrayburn there was also a rather interesting thing about the Harmon will John Harmon in order to get his father's money would have had to marry a young woman called bella wilfer who he had never ever met as it happens John Harmon is murdered so he doesn't have to marry bella wilfer the bella wilfer was obviously expecting she knew that she was going to supposed to be marrying this man and would be gaining all his money and wealth she is not from a very wealthy background and she is suddenly denied this feature that she was expecting to have as John Harmon is dead the money ends up going through some faithful servants of the Harmon family called mr. and mrs. boffin they are a lovely brilliant fascinating couple and they are servants mr. boffin has been a dustman he can't read he is not fit for society as it were but because him and his wife suddenly have all this money they get elevated into society in this fascinating way and suddenly everyone is interested in them because they have masses and masses of wealth sans the basic set up at the beginning of the novel a massive fortune and a murdered man you can already tell that it isn't gonna be a brilliant book so because I love about our mutual friend where do I even begin we said there are the sentimental reasons the fact that it got me into Dickens the fact that I have read it so many times that I wrote about it in an a-level essay that I wrote about it in my dissertation and all that I wrote about seven different Dickens novels in my dissertation I'll meet your friend definitely kind of overshadowed quite a lot of the rest there is the fact that it's my mom's Pro book there is the fact that I have reread it so many so many times there is the fact but there are so many brilliant characters in it there is the fact that I was shortlisted for a short story competition about Dickens after writing a short story from the perspective of Bradley headstone a character in our mutual friend there are just so many sentimental reasons why I love a mutual friend there are also a lot of reasons that are not purely sentimental for me our mutual friend represents the culmination of Dickens it is the best Dickens can do I love the balance it has between humor and darkness you know in his later novels in tear through cities and great expectations although there is some humorous though that is more darkness and the darkness overshadows the humor in our mutual friend that is not the case for me there is so much humor as well as so much darkness the social critique is at its best it is biting and fitting it is so pre in phase this character one of the society gentleman called podsnap and there are chapters which are called podsnappery which are all about the kind of hypocrisy of the upper classes and the way that society behave those chapters are brilliant I love the way Dickens comments on the upper classes I love that in our mutual friend there is such a wide kind of broad range of people in society from people who are very very poor and are making their living literally dragging bodies from the thames and people who are incredibly filthy rich and people who are acting like they're incredibly filthy rich even though they're not i love the wide range of characters in this that are characters that are lovable their accounts with a horrible and there are a lot of characters that are complicated everyone in our mutual friend for me is complicated I have mentioned several times in the last two weeks just how problematic Dickens's novels conveyed but for me everything that is problematic in Dickens is works is not exactly resolved in our mutual friend but at least like nearly resolved it is his last completed novel and so much of it for me kind of comments on and apologizes for his earlier work and doesn't exactly make amends but there is this sense in a mutual friend that for me it does feel like it's final novel I know he was writing the Miss Edwin Drood when he died but even though I wish he had finished him its revenue because I think it would have been brilliant I'm kind of happy if our mutual friend be his last finished novel because it feels like a lot of things are closed and resolved in a way in my Oliver Twist video I spoke about the anti-semitism with which Fagin is presented and in our mutual friend we have a character who is Jewish this character mr. riah is inhumanly good I mean he's still not like a necessarily a really human and realistic presentation of someone but he is angelic he a bit like Tom pinch in Martin Jesuit is another male de 10z an angel he is this really good kind loving caring man and everyone in society is completely prejudiced against mr. riah because he is a Jew they assume that he is horrible and he works for a man called fascination fledgeby who is not very nice but everyone always assumes that things mr. riah does which are kind of forced upon him by his employer are his fault because he's Jewish and the prejudice against mr. Ryder and the goodness mr. riah is proved to have is for me is kind of an apology for Fagin it's kind of Dickens realizing the problems he had and the unfair representations he had of certain characters when he was younger and that is important that is nice you know one of the reasons why I love Charles Dickens home artists that I have read all of his novels and I can see him progress as a writer and as a person over them that is wonderful again when i spoken about his problematic presentation of disability for example in the Old Curiosity Shop and in a mutual friend there are two characters who are disabled who both have to walk with canes one is Silas work who had his leg amputated when he was young and walk to the wooden leg mr. Wegg is a villain and the other character is Jenny Wren who is just one of my favourite characters in all of Dickens she might I might go so far as to say she might be my favorite character in all of Dickens Jenny Wren is a young girl somewhere between sort of 13 and 17 years of age she's basically described as being a child in years than an adult in the way she behaved she is a teenage girl she's disabled she has to walk on crutches and she runs her own business she's dolls dressmakers she works for herself she has to deal with her alcoholic father all the time she's had a hard life but she's positive she's brilliant she's searched a complicated wonderful character she completely stands up the her self works for herself wants to be independent and despite everything she has had to go through in life and despite all her complications and troubles and despite her disability she is not defined by any of that she is defined by being hard-working and to be honest just awesome there are some brilliant brilliant bits there is a bit where she punishes a man who has been pretty horrible to her and a few other people she knows in the most brilliant brilliant way she is just an incredibly sneaky but brilliant wonderful character and I love the Dickens goes from having a very simplistic presentation of characters with disability to having Jenny Wren which leads us on quite nicely also to the idea of gender I've spoken a lot about my problem with Dickens's presentation of women in his earlier novels and in our mutual friend for me we reached the combination of Dickens's characterization of everyone and his presentation both masculinity and a femininity we have men who are humbled we have women who are physically stronger Lizzie hexam is the first Dickensian character who is described as physically strong she's also the first female Dickensian character who does work that it's not women's work a lot of female Dickens characters work but most of them are doing kind of needlework and housework or they are working for relatives busy hexam works first for her father rowing the boat but later she works to support herself and she works in a paper mill which for Dickens for a women to be working in a paper mill and still to be a heroine is a really like massive thing there's also another character called Betty Higden who is an older woman who refuses help from anyone even though she has wealthy friends what she wants to do is work for herself to make her own money and Dickens describes her as a heroine and for Dickens that present these working women in this very very positive impressive empowered light is just brilliant it makes me so utterly happy often in his boring bland women of his early novels it just makes me so excited again a bit like Little Dorrit we have a kind of alteration of power play between a men and women in a really interesting way especially between sort of couples they're kind of power dynamic changes between particular couple was in a really interesting way notably between Lizzie hexam and a man who is interested in her yesterday I talked about how in da mean son Edith has this brilliant speech about the marriage market and we see similar ideas come up with the character of Benna Wolfer in our mutual friend bella wilfer who was originally supposed to be marrying John Harmon as part of his will you know she has been to a man in a will and that kind of has a really complicated effect on how she used the world because she speaks about being forever the property of strangers being bought and sold all her life because she is a woman who was left to someone in a will what that says about Victorian society is really really fascinating and the way that better reflects about that and the way Dickens talks about that it's just brilliant for me everything that has been problematic in all of Dickens is books is kind of I can forgive it because of our mutual friend other things I love my usual friend so many characters the characters in our mutual friend are so so complicated and interesting Lizzie hexam is a fascinating character and Jenny Wren her friend the dolls dressmaker is just incredible as I have already said Eugene Wrayburn I love he's a kind of further development of Sydney Carton from a tariffs to cities he's this careless man who is interested in nothing in life until he finds a woman who he becomes kind of obsessed with but not necessarily in a creepy way just in a complicated way that he can't quite understand here's a fascinating fascinating character and I think really kind of well-done because he is not completely likable and he is not completely heroic he's not even always completely respectable but he is such an interesting character and then there is Bradley headstone who is one of the villains of our mutual friend who I just think is absolutely brilliant to me Bradley headstone it's one of Dickens's few villains that you'll really be understand and you really sympathize with him he's a villain but he's also kind of a tragic hero in his own right watching his kind of descent into madness and into what he ends up doing is just absolutely brilliant he is just such a fascinating a wonderful wonderful character so well drawn I just although he is kind of terrifying at times the kind of intensity of his character and his changes over the novel it just brilliant in fact overall the whole character development across our mutual friend is really really well done the way Lizzie hexam and Eugene Wrayburn change are brilliant and bella wilfer as well has a fascinating character development over the whole of the novel she starts off the book very proud very arrogant very vain and the way she progresses and changes over the novel as just lovely there's also mr. Venus who makes his money from buying and selling bows as you can tell in I'll meet your friend there's I love themes of people making their money from unusual sources and kind of people making their livelihood from the dregs of society and those are only fascinating a theme that goes throughout your friend that there are so many fascinating things going throughout a mutual friend a bit like Little Dorrit and Dombey and son that is very very concerned with money and the effect that money can have on people it's also very very fascinated with ideas of respectability and being a lady being a gentleman what it means to be within society what it means for the boffins who have been servants for their life to suddenly be elevated into society because they have this fortune and people kind of flocking to them and pretending to like them and approve of them because they have money but meanwhile they're kind of saying all the things about them behind their back that kind of hypocrisy of society and the way it deals with money is really really fascinating the kind of greed that money is attracting in Victorian society Dickens deals and it's so interestingly in a mutual friend I think the plot is so complicated and engaging and just so very dramatic and fascinating we have a lot of kind of complex personal interweaving relationships but we also have a lot of drama and intrigue we have murders we have disappearances we have a lot of mysteries and I love a good mystery and I love the mysteries and I meet your friend a bit early there are a couple of points where the plot goes a little bit crazy and you're they're like really Dickens I don't quite believe you but because the part is so engaging you kind of just go with some of the odd mysteries and the odd reveal so you kind of just perfectly accept it because it is such a thoroughly engaging and lovely and fascinating book that you just can't help but adore it or at least if you're me you can't I think it never has the most realistic plots and he often has plots to contain a lot of coincidences I'll meet your friend definitely is that and as you can maybe tell from the title it is a book about mutual friends that are loved characters who know characters who know characters and a lot of kind of characters who are linked by various other people in a way that I love you get that in all of Dickens and that is maybe another reason why I love our mutual friend it for me sums up everything that is the best that Dickens it sums up his quirky complicatedness his ability to use these small weird eccentricities of Victorian society to make a novel things like the fact that they were actually people who made their livelihood by dragging dead bodies out of the Thames isn't that incredible and fascinating and it's got that human it's got the tenderness and it's got the love it's got the complex personal relationships the romantic relationships but you really do believe it's got complexity it's got deception it's got an ending that is both happy but also kated and times you have to think come on how are these people gonna feel about these events in five years time you know it's not just simple that easy it's got brilliant character development it's got amazing characters as themes of money and greed and deception it has the mystery it has the engagement it has complicated characters who change over the course of the novel it has people standing up for what they believe in and people standing up against villainy it has villains who are complicated and quirky but you do kind of believe in it has to me everything that is the best about Dickens that is why I love our mutual friend because everything I love about Dickens is encapsulated in this brilliant brilliant book it is for me the combination of his books I think it is the best maybe I don't know it is so so good so brilliant so powerful I just love it I want everyone to read it I love that it is quirky and yet beautiful I love it as eccentric yet believable I love that it deals with characters who are both horrible but also lovable and I love that it has complicated interesting female characters who are not defined by the fact that they are women and it have that it has male characters who are emotional but not defined by the fact that they are men one of the reasons why I Bradley headstone it kind of goes mad is because he has been bound up tightly in Victorian male respectability and the moment he lets that kind of guard slip he just goes completely wild I love that explores ideas and morality ideas of class and love it's comments on society I love everything about it it's just my favorite book have you got that yet I feel like I could sit here and talk about why I love our mutual friends a very long time I hope you have got a sense of what the book is like and part of the reasons why I love it it is a very complicated interweaving narrative with a lot of characters but I think it is beautiful I think it is powerful I think it is brilliant I think it is fascinating and there are so many great things about this book I haven't even touched on for example balance relationship with a father or the character of fascination fledgeby or the character of Georgiana podsnap and the lammles and how their loveless marriage based entirely on the belief that each other have a lot of money which they soon find out was not the case how that kind of binds them and tête together and tears them apart the way our mutual friend deals of the complexities of marriage as the Victorian institution the way it deals with money and wills and what it means to be a person in Victorian society everything it is so good quickly before my camera runs out of battery I just have time to tell you about this brilliant TV adaptation of a mutual friend from 1998 Lincoln is really good it's not completely truthful to the book and they have to miss a lot out as always happens especially when they're trying to do a massive book in six hours but it is a really good adaptation I think the presentations of the characters are brilliant and david morrissey as Bradley headstone is absolutely perfect he gets it spot-on and there are so many brilliant performances in this I think it's all done really well another like small detail I really love and this in like all the society seems everything looks really bright and then when you get to the scenes by the 10th suddenly everything he looks like really dark whenever we're dealing with the characters who are struggling with poverty I think that's really like clever nice device of it I saw this before I read the book they didn't spoil the book for me I still adore the book I would recommend reading the book first but once you have read the book I do recommend this I think it's really brilliant one of my favorite TV adaptations of all time and it got me into Dickens so obviously it has a very high sentimental place in my heart as well so all in all I love our mutual friend please read it people please do it is my favorite novel of all time I cannot recommend enough I love it as this video who have been Prince I love it so much I think it is beautiful and incredible I'm going to leave you with that please let me know if you have enjoyed what the Dickens and what Dickens book you are now the most curious to read I'm genuinely really interested to hear which Dickens novel has made a peach or interest and what you have thought of this series I'll be back tomorrow with a video that will not be about Dickens in the meantime happy reading happy birthday Dickens

Channel: Books and Things

Views: 28,269

Keywords: booktube, books, literature, Charles Dickens, Victorians, Our Mutual Friend

Id: HKIG2UPlflU

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2016