"Worthier Than the Doll in the Doll's House": Feminine Agency in Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend".

This study explores Dickens's last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, and its presentation of feminine agency within the framework of consumer-driven society. In the novel, Dickens presents female characters who are virtually deemed powerless in a social system of commodification, as they become objects meant for public consumption and display. However, many of these women are able to transcend or resist their roles as powerless objects by actively resisting the values of their surrounding commodity culture. Thus, the novel's female characters use conventional feminine activities such as fashion worship, doll play, and female friendships to appropriate their society's values for their own individual aims. In doing so, they are able to attain a sense of independent agency as they embody a shift in Dickens's gender ideology and a reinvention of the feminine ideal.