Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens - Howard W. Fulweiler (essay date 1994)

Howard W. Fulweiler (essay date 1994)

SOURCE:: “‘A Dismal Swamp’: Darwin, Design, and Evolution in Our Mutual Friend,” in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 49, No. 1, June, 1994, pp. 51-74.

[In the following essay, Fulweiler explores the connections between Darwin's theories and Dickens's fiction, particularly Our Mutual Friend; both offer worlds of inter-connected individuals competing for advantage with no hint of a transcendental master plan for the world.]

Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life.

The Origin of Species

A fresh reading of Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859) reveals once more the Victorian gentleman-scientist's comprehensive vision of the mutual relationship of organic beings to each other and to their environment....

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