SOURCE: “Laughter in Our Mutual Friend,” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 13, No. 3, Fall, 1971, p. 509-21.

In the following essay, Sherer examines Our Mutual Friend as a prime example of Dickens's ability to create humor while treating serious themes.

Dickens' enigmatic Our Mutual Friend, the last complete novel he wrote, is an ideal place to examine his mature genius for creating humor. The laughter of the novel is abundant and varied and is related in complex ways to what is unique in Dickens' art. Most characteristic of the work itself is its comprehensiveness. Its innumerable scenes and characters generate a web of themes in which all is ultimately related. At the same time, the structural insularity of its parts provides a variety of situations well suited to manifest a wide tonal range of laughter. A brief look at overall structure shows how this is so.

Two...