Terribly Wrong or Wonderfully Right

In Dickens’ novel Our Mutual Friend, he explores the idea of money as a corrupting force. With his tongue-in-cheek accounts of the Veneerings and their dinner parties and his depiction of the “rise and fall” of Nicodemus Boffin, Dickens seems to be of the opinion that with wealth comes a world of inescapable vices. And yet there is one character whose narrative complicates this assertion. Bella Wilfer, a poor, selfish, discontented young woman whose sole chance at becoming rich was ruined by John Harmon’s murder, is given a second chance at riches when Mr. and Mrs. Boffin take her in and share their inheritance with her.

                When Bella first begins to live with the Boffins, she is moody, avaricious, and somehow spoiled without ever having been given much. With Bella, Dickens does not attempt to create an innocent, loveable character whose virtuousness shines through her dark and poverty-stricken circumstances. Not only does she have a multitude of undesirable characteristics, but she despises being poor and willingly admits her love for money. So when the Boffins offer to “give [Bella] the opportunity of sharing such pleasures as [they] are a going to take [themselves]” (112), she accepts and goes to live with them, knowing it is the only way she’ll have another shot at marrying into a wealthy household. At the Boffins, Bella continues to exhibit an unpleasant attitude towards all who she sees as “beneath” her, including the Boffins’ secretary, John Rokesmith (the supposedly-dead John Harmon), whom she treats with cold indifference and even outright disgust. “So insolent,” he describes her with some resentment after a particularly trying interaction, “so trivial, so capricious, so mercenary, so careless, so hard to touch, so hard to turn… and yet so pretty, so pretty” (207)!

                Though few readers can see past Bella’s nasty qualities, Rokesmith seems to, and continues to pursue her with patient and gentle kindness. He calls her hidden, better qualities to the surface and helps her to see her own shallowness in a new light. To help this process along, Dickens begins to turn Mr. Boffin into a miserly old man. On seeing this troubling transformation, the ever-self-aware Bella finds herself torn for the first time between her love for money and what it might do to her. “And yet Pa,” she tells her father, “think how terrible the fascination of money is! I see this and hate this, and dread this, and don’t know but that money might make a much worse change in me. And yet I have money always in my thoughts and my desires…” (455). It is around this time that Dickens begins to lead readers toward developing an investment in Bella, and the possibility for her own transformation, though not of the same type as Mr. Boffin undergoes. Readers suddenly want Bella to escape the corrupting forces of money, and to become a noble character.

In the end, it is largely due to the kind guidance of Mr. Rokesmith, the deterrent behavior of Mr. Boffin and the inspirational encouragement of Lizzie Hexam that Bella is brought to a state of repentance and change. She no longer merely recognizes what a “shallow, cold, worldly, Limited brute” (520) she is, but desires to be better – to be worthy of Mr. Rokesmith’s gracious love. So when Mr. Boffin fires Mr. Rokesmith after an extended succession of unmerited abuses, Bella’s conversion is made complete. The girl who once declared “I hate to be poor, and we are degradingly poor, offensively poor, miserable poor, beastly poor” (45), now finds herself exclaiming, “Oh Mr. Rokesmith, before you go, if you could but make me poor again! O! Make me poor again, Somebody, I beg and pray, or my heart will break if this goes on” (583)! 

Though delighted and relieved by the fact that Bella was able to escape the money plot and become an admirable character, I could not help but wonder why Dickens would make her the exception to his rule. Was he just a sappy lovebird who wanted a fairytale ending? Or was he qualifying the rule by suggesting that possessing wealth requires a level of self-awareness and an understanding of Money’s corrupting influence on anyone who allows it to become an object of their greatest fascinations? Because I like to give others the benefit of the doubt, I lean toward the second of these two options. Although I haven’t finished reading it, it seems that in a way, Our Mutual Friend functions as a cautionary tale or a story-with-a-moral; warning its readers of what could go terribly wrong – or wonderfully right – when one has a great deal of money (or a great desire for it).