Venus's Parrot

Photo copyright Alan Turvey; Courtesy TrekNature.com

One of the strangest settings in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend exists in the dreary world of Mr. Venus’s taxidermy shop. Filled with various mounted animals ranging from “two preserved frogs fighting a small-sword duel” (Dickens 83) and dogs to human specimens – a “Preserved Indian. African ditto” (86) – Venus’s trade is one of the novel’s more outlandish occupations. Despite the wide range of creatures and oddities present, any one of which would benefit from an in-depth examination, the animal with the most bearing is the parrot that lies on the shop workbench (493).

Perpetually surrounded by “the trophies of [his] art” (489), Venus receives no relief from his chosen profession. During an initial visit from Silas Wegg, he proclaims that business “never was so good” and that “both by sight and by name [he is] perfect” (89). Despite his promising business prospects, however, Venus’s melancholy becomes apparent from his introduction. In that scene, he bemoans that his one love rejects him on account of his profession. Only later, when he wrenches Harmon’s will from Wegg, do we become cognizant of the woman who denies him: Pleasant Riderhood. In the dingy confines of the shop, one object in particular torments him and triggers his reminiscences. He relates to Wegg that he went to the shore hunting for dead parrots – a bird that decidedly does not thrive in England – for a museum requesting his talents (492). He proceeds to recount that he “was doomed to fall in with her and deal with her” (492), for it was there that he purchased the parrot from Pleasant Riderhood.

The plot details remain crucial to the story because the image of the parrot is what causes Venus to relate his tribulations to Wegg. Like the rest of the objects in his shop, the parrot is dead. Even more relevant, the bird remains sorely out of its element. Its bright plumage provides a vivid contrast to the shop, which “is so dark that nothing can be made out in it” (83). Beyond acting as a reminder of his first encounter with Pleasant, the parrot becomes an entity Venus identifies himself with. The bird “lies on its side, dried up; except for its plumage, very like myself” (493). Both Venus and the parrot decay at a similar rate, with the shop owner noting his own physical deterioration into a bag of bones. The source of decomposition stems from an absence of nurturing forces: for the parrot, its tropical climate, and for Venus, the appropriately-named Pleasant. 

Like many Victorian authors, Dickens’s names serve to further the individual’s characteristics. As the footnotes for the Penguin edition of the novel state, the goddess Venus was born of sea foam (809). Dickens’s naming therefore suggests that Mr. Venus possesses an intrinsic connection with the sea. Indeed, his relationship with water appears a positive one; the shore exists as the place where Venus met his beloved. In the confines of the taxidermy shop, both Venus and the parrot live in an element divorced from their natural habitat. As important as his job is to him, Venus struggles with a conflict between what is prepared and artificial – his trophies – and the magnetism of the natural in Pleasant Riderhood, with the parrot serving as a constant reminder of the tension.