Our Mutual Friend (Annotated)

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-Our common friend (in original English, Our Mutual Friend) is the latest complete novel by the English writer Charles Dickens, published in installments between 1864 and 1865. In many ways, it is one of his most sophisticated and complex works, combining a great depth Psychological with a rich social analysis. At first glance, it seems to focus, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, on money, money, money, and what money can make of life (which is a quote from the novel itself, from Bella, at the end of Book III, chapter IV), but a deeper analysis shows that, above all, it focuses on human values and their application in Victorian society. For many critics and writers such as Italo Calvino, the novel is an absolute masterpiece, in which Dickens, pessimistic and already mature, demonstrates the full force of his prose and inventiveness in an authentic exercise of literary virtuosity.In the initial chapter, a young man goes to London to receive the paternal inheritance, which, according to his father's will, can only receive it if he marries Bella Wilfer, a beautiful young woman but whom he has never met . However, before arriving, a corpse is discovered floating on the River Thames, and the police identify him as his own, so that he is considered dead. The inheritance then passes to Boffins, his father's uneducated worker - he cannot read - and the effects of this extend to all extremes of London society.John Harmon - heir to the Harmon family property, but on the condition that he marry Bella Wilfer, allegedly killed during most of the novel, in fact lives under the name of John Rokesmith and works as a secretary for the Boffin, in order to know better the reaction of Bella, the Boffin and the people in general to his "death." He also used the name of Julius Handford, on his first return to London.