Fathers and Daughters

‘“A muddling and swipey old child,” said Miss Wren, rating him with great severity, “fit for nothing but to be preserved in the liquor that destroys him”’ (Dickens 523)

In Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, the relationships between parents and children often function quite unconventionally. Role reversals are common throughout the novel.

In my blog post, however, I am going to focus specifically on father-daughter relationships.

The most obvious example of this is the young doll’s dressmaker Jenny Wren and her alcoholic father. They have literally swapped places— Jenny acts as the adult in the house, scolding her father when he comes home drunk and sniveling and pathetic, and yet she also takes over his household responsibilities. Because of her father’s alcoholism, she never had a real childhood. She was forced to grow up simply so they could survive. Her father, then, as evidenced in the quote above, is only ever referred to as her child. As she remarks to Bradley Headstone, "’Don’t talk of children. I can't bear children. I know their tricks and their manners"’ (224). Jenny, who has always been surrounded by the adult alcoholic acquaintances of her father, sees them as having the irresponsible, immature qualities of children and loses all respect for them despite their seniority. It seems as if she would be entirely better off without him, and frequently orders him out of her sight because of it.

            Gaffer Hexam, too, is a subpar father to Lizzie and Charley. He involves them in his dirty occupation and cares little for their social and educational upbringing. When Charley leaves for a ragged school, Gaffer immediately disowns him and pronounces him an ungrateful traitor. He treats Lizzie only marginally better, simply because she has promised to stay by his side. And yet, she is more of an associate than a daughter to him. In a curious statement, Gaffer himself seems to acknowledge that the river was more of a parental figure to Lizzie than he ever was. “’How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very fire that warmed you when you were a baby, was picked out of the river alongside the coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide washed ashore…’” (15) Gaffer personifies the river in this statement, admitting that aspects of Lizzie’s comfort as a baby was only due to the generous traits of the Thames, and not necessarily due to his own fatherly instincts.

The relationship between Bella Wilfer and her father is also lacking of real parental support. Mr. Wilfer is very passive and often moody; he does not have a strong will of his own, he resents his wife and his marriage, and he lets Bella pamper him as if she were his mother. Though Bella does love him, and enjoy his company more than she does her sister and mother, she still does not seem to respect him as a person. Dickens aids this perspective when they are out on the town together: “Back came her father, more like a boy than ever…” (313). In Bella’s quest to see her father in a better light, she buys him a whole new wardrobe with her money from the Boffins. ‘”Now, Pa, attend to what I am going to say, and promise and vow to be obedient”’ (313). She orders him around as if he was her child, instead of the other way around, and he listens and docilely does as she asks without any questioning or complaint.  This continues to illustrate the prevalence of the parent-child role reversal amongst most of the fathers and daughters of the novel.