In this podcast, Professor Jon Mee is joined by three of his MA students, Harriet Kilikita, Rebecca Lea and Naomi Hammond, to discuss Our Mutual Friend. They examine dark humour and how it enhances the troubled subject matter; the commodification of bodies; the concept of human beings having market value and subsequent alienation, and the significance of dust heaps and the River Thames.

The comedy often makes responses troubling, there's something very grotesque about Wegg going into that shop seeking to buy back his own leg, but as well as seeing it as horrific there is something darkly comic about it, and that means the scene's never resolved - it stays with us as something troubling.

Professor Jon Mee