Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens's final completed novel (1865), opens with a body pulled from the Thames—the presumed death of John Harmon, heir to a dust-heap fortune. In truth, Harmon has adopted the alias "John Rokesmith" to test Bella Wilfer, the mercenary beauty his father's will commands him to marry. Working as secretary to the kindly Boffins, he witnesses Bella's gradual transformation into a loving wife. Interwoven is Lizzie Hexam's story, courted by the lawyer Eugene Wrayburn and pursued by the obsessive schoolmaster Bradley Headstone. Satirizing wealth-worship and Victorian society, the novel celebrates love, redemption, and moral rebirth over money.
