Our Mutual Friend · Chapter
The R. Wilfer Family explained
This chapter introduces the Wilfer family, focusing on the patriarch Reginald Wilfer, a poor clerk with a cherubic appearance and a grand name that belies his humble circumstances.
What happens
This chapter introduces the Wilfer family, focusing on the patriarch Reginald Wilfer, a poor clerk with a cherubic appearance and a grand name that belies his humble circumstances. His wife is tall and angular, and their daughters Bella and Lavinia bicker over Bella's lost prospects of wealth and her disdain for poverty. The family prepares to take in a lodger, Mr. John Rokesmith, whose arrival is anticipated with suspicion.
Themes in this chapter
Social Class and Mobility
The Wilfer family's poverty and Bella's lament over her lost glimpse of wealth illustrate the precariousness of social mobility and the sting of dashed expectations.
Wealth and Corruption
Bella's mourning for her lost fortune and her disdain for poverty reflect the corrupting influence of wealth and the way it shapes personal relationships and self-worth.
Characters to notice
- Reginald Wilfer
The poor clerk and patriarch, cherubic in appearance, who signs his name as R. Wilfer and is known as 'Rumty' in his neighborhood.
- Mrs. Wilfer
The tall, angular wife who wears gloves indoors and ties her head in a pocket-handkerchief, often extolling her family's virtues.
- Bella Wilfer
The daughter who mourns her lost chance at wealth, wears black as a 'kind of widow who never was married,' and complains about poverty.
- Lavinia Wilfer
The younger sister who bickers with Bella and picks up draught pieces after Bella knocks them off the table.
- John Rokesmith
Mentioned as the expected lodger whose arrival the family anticipates with some fear.
- Mortimer Lightwood
Referred to as 'that nasty Mr. Lightwood' who wrote to Bella about her potential inheritance, causing her to break off with George Sampson.
Key passages
“So poor a clerk, though having a limited salary and an unlimited family, that he had never yet attained the modest object of his ambition: which was, to wear a complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at one time.”
Reginald Wilfer was so poor, despite his small salary and large family, that he had never been able to afford a full new outfit all at once.
Highlights the chronic poverty of the Wilfer family and the modest aspirations of the father.
“I am here in this ridiculous mourning—which I hate!—a kind of a widow who never was married.”
Bella complains that she is stuck wearing mourning clothes for a man she never married, making her feel like a mock widow.
Shows Bella's frustration with her social situation and her resentment over the lost inheritance.