Mr Boffin, with his face bent over his heavy hand, made no sound, but rolled his shoulders when thus referred to, as if he were vastly enjoying himself.
Mr. Boffin loves playing the villain. He's done this for the entire book, and he seems to enjoy it. It's good that it is just for show.
‘if you could have seen him of a night, at that time of it! The way he’d sit and chuckle over himself!
It turns out that Mr. Boffin is worse than we already thought. He pretends to turn into a "mean guy" in appropriate terms, once he inherits all of Harmon's money. What he is really doing is testing Bella to see if she will stand up to him, or if she will just continue taking his money. It is extremely deceitful, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some kind of repercussion that came from doing this.
I feel persuaded that I shall live long enough to be married, dear fellow.’
Eugene knows that he is dying, but he wanted Lizzie to marry him regardless. This is a lot to ask for, since she would have to deal with the emotional consequences let alone the duty of taking care of his funeral and other things.
And now, the church-porch having swallowed up Bella Wilfer for ever and ever, had it not in its power to relinquish that young woman, but slid into the happy sunlight, Mrs John Rokesmith instead.
This metaphorical sentence was a great transition to introduce Bella as Mrs. Rokesmith. I think that Dickens play on ideas here was perfect for setting up the nature of their relationship of how suddenly one chapter of their lives closed and another one began.
‘If I had left myself any breath to cry with, I should have cried again. Now poor dear darling little Pa, you are going to see your lovely woman unexpectedly.’
Bella leaves Mr. and Mrs. Boffin because she deeply hates the way that they behave. She seems to be coming to terms with her decision to leave. Even though she's given up something that could have made her a good living for the rest of her life, she is eager to see her father who may be poor but gives her all of his love.
‘I wish I had never brought him up. He’d be sharper than a serpent’s tooth, if he wasn’t as dull as ditch water. Look at him. There’s a pretty object for a parent’s eyes!’
It is interesting to see that Jenny treats her father like a child even though she is his daughter. It goes to show that being a drunk really does portray a person as incapable of functioning as an adult. Even though Jenny is a teenager, she seems to seem much older as the story develops. It leaves me to wonder if this act of maturity will reflect more prominently in the rest of the book.
Before my eyes he grows suspicious, capricious, hard, tyrannical, unjust.
Bella Wilfer is sad to see that money has turned Mr. Boffin into a narcissistic jerk. However, it is very common for money to get to someone's head, so it should not come as a surprise.
‘It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals,’ said he, ‘to be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here.
John Harmon uses these lines to talk about how he feels having to act like a dead man even though he is very much alive. It is just his identity that is dead since he now has to live as someone else.
This had a modest self-denying appearance; but it soon turned out that as, by reason of the impossibility of standing the glass upright while there was anything in it, it required to be emptied as soon as filled
By using a glass that cannot be set on a table, he is forced to finish the drink almost immediately. This enables him to get more out of the bottle than the other party, which is a sneaky way to get more out of it. This could be a direct reflection of the type of person he is when it comes to his interactions with others.
The reversion falling in soon after they were married
This quote brought up a very good point that I failed to realize until this point. During this time, women would lose everything they had to their name once they were married. It would then automatically belong to the husband. That may be why status was so important to each party when getting married.
‘How to your father? Can you ask! By perpetuating the consequences of his ignorant and blind obstinacy. By resolving not to set right the wrong he did you. By determining that the deprivation to which he condemned you, and which he forced upon you, shall always rest upon his head.’
Eugene is implying that Lizzie is hurting herself by not choosing to get an education. His message through this quote is to imply that now her father isn't present to influence her ability to get an education (because he forbid her), she should take advantage of the opportunity.
The death of Hexam rendering the sweat of the honest man’s brow unprofitable, the honest man had shufflingly declined to moisten his brow for nothing, with that severe exertion which is known in legal circles as swearing your way through a stone wall. Consequently, that new light had gone sputtering out. But, the airing of the old facts had led some one concerned to suggest that it would be well before they were reconsigned to their gloomy shelf—now probably for ever—to induce or compel that Mr Julius Handford to reappear and be questioned. And all traces of Mr Julius Handford being lost, Lightwood now referred to his client for authority to seek him through public advertisement.
At this point of the novel I anticipate that there will be a goose chase between Lightwood and Handford. I can only sympathize with Lightwood at this point because he is seeking something that technically does not exist since Handford is in fact Mr. Rokesmith. Until Handford is "found," Lightwood will be going in circles about the timeline of events having to do with Hexam's death.
‘When we worked like the neighbours, we suited one another. Now we have left work off; we have left off suiting one another.’
Mrs. Boffin and her husband disagree on whether or not they should act differently now that they have more money. Mrs. Boffin thinks that they should act with more elegance and class while Mr. Boffin doesn't find it necessary. This could be foreshadowing as to who will be more corrupted by their money out of the two of them. Money always has effect on people no matter what the circumstances, so it is bound to happen to at least one of them.
‘And so a man climbs to the top of the tree, Mr Wegg, only to see that there’s no look-out when he’s up there! I sit here of a night surrounded by the lovely trophies of my art, and what have they done for me? Ruined me. Brought me to the pass of being informed that “she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light”!’ Having repeated the fatal expressions, Mr Venus drinks more tea by gulps, and offers an explanation of his doing so.
This seemed like a metaphor for the disappointments of life. Some people work so hard to get where they think they want to be in life and hoping that all of their hard work will bring them success and happiness, but sometimes it just does not happen that way. The unfortunate part is that you don't know for sure until the end of it.
‘You did not find all these yourself; did you?’ asked Eugene. To which the bird of prey slowly rejoined, ‘And what might your name be, now?’ ‘This is my friend,’ Mortimer Lightwood interposed; ‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’ ‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn, is it? And what might Mr Eugene Wrayburn have asked of me?’ ‘I asked you, simply, if you found all these yourself?’ ‘I answer you, simply, most on ‘em.’ ‘Do you suppose there has been much violence and robbery, beforehand, among these cases?’ ‘I don’t suppose at all about it,’ returned Gaffer. ‘I ain’t one of the supposing sort. If you’d got your living to haul out of the river every day of your life, you mightn’t be much given to supposing.
Gaffer reacts naturally to interrogation, at first diverting questions that are asked of him by two well educated lawyers because he does not want to incriminate himself. Gaffer also makes a valid point that there is a difference between the statuses of the lawyers compared to him. The lawyers are well educated and earn a high income, giving them more of an ability to be curious. In Gaffer's state, all he is interested in is making sure his family has food to eat and a place to live. He would not put himself out on the line to get more information on something that he would not benefit from.