Dombey and Son

I first read this book about 30 years ago and immediately declared it to be one of my favorite books of all time. Sometimes those feelings don't stand the test of time so well. But sometimes they do. I love this book. I love the kind, loving, wonderful (yet very put upon) Florence. I love the brave, honorable, loving Walter Gay. I love the insanely weird (but loving) Captain Cuttle and Mr. Toots. I love little Paul and Solomon Gills and Susan Nipper and Polly and Diogenes. I even love the complex characters of Edith and Alice. And, although I can't say that I love them, Mr. Dombey and James Carker and Mrs. Brown and Cleopatra are oh so good at being oh so bad.

To me, Dombey and Son is the most entertaining of Dicken's books. His take on show more how women (in all aspects of life) are treated during the Victorian era is excellent. Whether it's a wet nurse who is treated abysmally or an unwanted and neglected daughter or a haughty wife who refuses to be tamed by her husband or a beautiful woman who is ruined forever by a cruel and heartless man, the hits keep coming.

The plot, as with all Dicken's novels, is very, very convoluted, but there seem to be fewer loose threads than in some of his works. Since most of his works were serialized first, you sometimes get the feeling that he changed courses during the writing at times and left a few things unresolved. But that is not the case in Dombey and Son. The plot may be convoluted, but it is still tight. All characters of note are accounted for in the end.

I love a good story and I love great characters. It is hard for me to get into a novel that doesn't have a traditional plot (think James Joyce) or has only unlikeable characters (yes, I'm talking about you, Of Human Bondage!) no matter how beautiful the writing is. That's why I love Dicken's novels. He always delivers one helluva story with memorable and mostly likeable characters (outside of the villains). And between plot, character and the focus on women, Dicken's delivers a wonderful book. It has stood the test of time and is still one of my very favorite books. show less

Reading Dickens in publication order, this novel stands out. For the first time Dickens outlined his plot in advance and coordinated every element toward its fulfilment. The subplots are thoroughly tied in and there's foreshadowing nearly from the beginning. The feel is less chaotic, but the core elements of a Dickens novel are still present: rapidly drawn characters that instantly appear fully formed, the coy humour, the social commentary and shots at the upper class. He also winds up the story in his typical way, which is perhaps the one aspect I'm finding growing old after reading seven of these. The newfound structure is almost too rigid, its moral so clear from the get-go that it leaves only the procedure of its delivery. In the show more case of most classics I recommend knowing key plot points in advance to witness how they artfully unfold, but in this instance so much is telegraphed that it's worth maintaining the little suspense remaining.

There's more urban scenes this time than rural, wealthy homes and businesses predominating. Dickens supplies another host of memorable characters, the stalwart Susan Nipper and do-gooder Captain Cuttle being particular favourites of mine. I was impressed at first with the villain, but I was certain there were more evil machinations in play than that. For a novel so obviously centered on Dombey Sr., I found it surprising how rarely we got into his head. We don't know what justification lies behind his pride, what his relationship with his own father was like or how good he actually is at his job. He shares almost nothing of himself and remains mostly an enigma, arguably the flattest character in Dickens' repertoire (so far). Contrast him with Edith, who shares his degree of pride but has some intriguing layers and was arresting in all of her scenes.

All my complaining aside, this was a step up from his last two or three novels. I'm looking forward to where Dickens' new devotion to structure will take him, knowing that most of his best-known titles still lie ahead. show less

Mr. Dombey is a proud, wealthy businessman convinced of his own significance. When his wife has a daughter he deeply disapproves and hopes she will do better next time. When next she has a son, he is pleased, but ultimately vexed when she dies leaving him without an appropriate personage to feed and care for his son. Forced to take in a wet nurse, he is very concerned that this common woman will pollute his child. Later when she is caught visiting her family, he immediately dismisses her. His young son grows up sickly and is sent away to live in the care of a doctor and get some schooling. Unfortunately, he dies while very young.

The grief Dombey experiences is primarily for his own thwarted hopes. However, he nurses a deep resentment show more against his unwanted daughter, Florence, who the little boy loved dearly - possibly more that his father. After the boy's death, Florence is left largely alone. Her father will not tolerate her presence so she must content herself with her faithful maid and the loving friends she makes everywhere. Later, when Dombey decides to remarry, Florence hopes her new mother will teach her how to earn her father's love. However, the new Mrs. Dombey is a proud woman who deeply resents the way she was purchased by her wealthy new husband. Of course she loves Florence, but despises her husband and his cold, lordly way of relating to her as an extension of his own magnificence.

Before long, she leaves her husband, running off with his most trusted business associate. Once again, Dombey blames this difficulty on his daughter and when he strikes Florence is anger, she realizes what he truly is and flees her home, heartbroken. Shortly thereafter, she marries her childhood sweetheart and sails to China. But she's back in a year to beg her father's forgiveness. He is much more inclined to hear her, as he is suffering bankruptcy. Finally, at the end of his life he sees the error of his ways and reconciles with his loving daughter. He has a grandson now, and is at last at peace.

This is a weird story. My favorite character is Mrs. Skewton who is promptly killed off - perhaps the greatest tragedy in the novel. In typical Dickensian fashion, the good are rewarded and the bad are forgiven. At least the bad men are. The fallen Mrs. Dombey will ever live in shame and estrangement from those she loved. She decided to violate that sacred role of woman: to be a man's punching bag and then come crawling back to him on hands and knees. Like most of the work of Dickens, the novel is superficially charming but the moral underpinnings are repugnant and do not bear close examination. show less

"for not an orphan in the world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love"

The Dombey of the title is the wealthy owner of a shipping company who dreams of having a son and heir who will be able to carry on the family business. Dombey gets his wish but when she dies shortly after the birth, she leaves her son, Paul, to become the sole focus of his father’s attention despite Dombey already having a six-year-old daughter, Florence. Florence loves her father and does her best to please him, but it’s obvious that all of Dombey’s hopes and ambitions lie with Paul and that Florence is simply an inconvenience.

For Dombey the world exists only to further the interests of his family business and show more consequently the plot revolves around the destruction of Dombey's arrogant, selfish pride and whether or not he will ever come to love and value his daughter as she deserves.

This is a hefty tome numbering well in excess of 900 pages but thankfully there aren't too many characters to get confused about and some of these like Major Bagstock, Sir Barnet Skettles and Cousin Feenix actually add little to the central plot. There is however, a cracking villain, James Carker, the scheming manager of Dombey and Son, with gleaming white teeth and a devious brain. There are also some great minor characters, in particular Captain Cuttle, the kind-hearted retired sea captain with a hook for a hand, and Susan Nipper, Florence’s loyal nurse; one of the few people who stands up to Dombey over his neglect of his daughter.

It's this last character that is particularly interesting. Dickens gets a lot of criticism for his treatment of female characters but the women in this book are well-drawn and interesting. Yes, Florence can be too good to be true at times, but her father’s rejection of her is so cruel and hurtful that it’s impossible not to have sympathy for her. Her stepmother, Edith Dombey, though, a woman filled with self-loathing after being pushed into marriage by her mother, who then decides to take her fate into her own hands is the strongest female characters that I’ve come across in a Dickens novel thus far. The novel really shines a light on the oppressed position of women in society at that time and I found the faded gentility of Mrs Chark and Louisa Tox quite enlightening as well.

This is my fifth Dickens novel to date and my least favourite thus far. Although I enjoyed parts, other sections dragged and it seemed to lack some of the subtle humour that I had come to expect in his works. I also felt that the absence of a 'hero' meant that the plotting and structure felt a little off. show less

Oh my. It's a slog through the depths of pride and how it damages not just the bearers of the pride but those around them. The book opens with the birth of Paul Dombey, Jr., and the consequent death of his mother. The older daughter, Florence, is just six and already afraid of her place in the world: for her father, the world only exists for himself and his son; a daughter (and the necessity of a wife) are only useless appendages. Reading how the daughter is treated, the mother is seen as a bother (until her funeral, at which point she is forgotten) are still such relevant themes that this book should be required reading for those in the profession of counseling families. While some of the hyperbole of the pride of Mr. Dombey and his show more second wife, Edith, are products of Dickens' need to write more words, or perhaps used to bolster the plot twists, the overall effects of these characters' driving forces are still timely.

Some of the minor characters were a bit overblown in Dickens' descriptions of them, such as Mr. Toots or Mrs. Pipchin, until their dialogue started. And then the timeliness? relevance? of these characters became relevant. Mr. Toots is so besotted with love for poor Florence and so unaware of his own worth in the world due to his schooling at Dr. Blimber's School that he becomes a long-winded, self-effacing sort who reminds me of many geeks trying to find their way in a world that has unwritten social rules they don't always grasp. And Mrs. Pipchin and her treatment of small children and servants? She reminds me of several elementary schoolteachers who decided the best way to train children was to make life hard for them. Heck, I've even worked for several Mrs. Pipchins, though not for very long. She may be seen as comic" by Dickens commentators or critics, but she is another minor character who still has her parallels in real life.

And then there's Cap'n Cuttle! What a great guy. His unwavering devotion to Sol Gills, Wal'r, and Florence are pure Dickens and provide some welcome Light into what is often a dark and despairing tunnel. His fear of his landlady, Mrs. MacStinger, is hilarious and brought some great comments during our bookgroup conversations. And let's not forget how well he ran the Midshipman in its owner's absence!

Finally, Florence and Edith. Two tragic characters, each with a different path, and each created to prove a point Dickens wants to make. They are given no true character development; rather, they are the foils to Dombey himself. Florence is his neglected daughter who never gives up hope that she will someday make her Papa love her and notice her with something other than anger. Through the pen of Charles Dickens, she never gives in to anger, hate, or cruelty, a true spirit of Victorian womanhood. We know now what happens with this level of neglect to a loving child, but for the purposes of this book and the Victorian views of the female character, those sides to her are never explored. Instead, Edith, Dombey's second wife, is as proud as her husband and as stubborn, and is "sold" into marriage because that is what happened to women of the upper classes. She never stops hating herself and seeking to destroy herself, proudly holding her head high as she stays aloof from Dombey and the world in which she has married into. Her one soft spot, the part that makes her most human, is her softness and love towards Florence. And Edith's self-hatred was easily a sympathetic part of her character, and she gives an excellent speech about why and what her life has become. I hold the highest esteem for her and what her character has to face. show less

As is the case with most later Dickens, the villains are fleshed out and interesting and have realistic motivations, and the hero/ines are the barest of virtuous outlines. Although I'll admit that Florence Dombey's actions are realistic, though not at all for the reasons Dickens put forward: he claims she is just a living saint, as beautiful women in Dickens always are, whereas I could see someone who had that kind of relationship to her father actually being like that -- going to great lengths to be liked by everybody because she desperately needs approval, and promptly marrying the only person who's ever been nice to her. Dickens accidentally gets the actions of self-loathing right, in the guise of Perfect Womanhood. God, that's show more depressing. show less

[a:Charles Dickens|239579|Charles Dickens|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1387078070p2/239579.jpg], more than any other author I know of, has come to symbolize his times; with barely a person alive today who would not equate Victorian England with Dickens, if only through his book, [b:A Christmas Carol|36295028|A Christmas Carol (Annotated)|Charles Dickens|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1506250793l/36295028._SX50_.jpg|3097440]. Many of his books are very well-known and still frequently taught and read, but [b:Dombey and Son|50827|Dombey and Son|Charles Dickens|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320513735l/50827._SY75_.jpg|4998726] is one that I would count show more as more obscure. Having now read it, I wonder why. It is a remarkable piece of literature, emblematic of the coming of the Industrial Age, and loaded with everything that makes Dickens so unique.

I read this in much the way Victorian readers would have done, because I read it one chapter a day with a terrific group, Dickensians!. Of course, even this was accelerated reading, the Victorians would have gotten it over a much longer spread, since Dickens released it in 20 monthly installments.

This is primarily the story of Mr. Dombey, a man obsessed with his company and money, and his desire to leave his kingdom to a male heir. Dombey has his heir in the first chapter of the novel, a lovely boy named Paul, a child he worships, but he also has a daughter, Florence, whom he resents and mistreats abominably. This is a dysfunctional household and family, made more pitiful by the death of the mother with the birth of the son, and we are given to see that much more clearly by Dickens’ presenting us with two other households that are nowhere near as wealthy, but contain all the loving relationships this one is missing. In many ways, this is Florence’s story...the story of a daughter, not a son.

In the course of this novel, Dickens addresses pride, deceit, the value of love over money, child to parent relationships, the degradation of the human soul, unrequited love, the insufferability of blowhards, retribution, revenge, and reclamation. If I took a few minutes, I could probably make another list just as long of themes he explores, for he explores the human condition in all its glory and shame. He accomplishes this through an array of unforgettable characters, the proud and beautiful Edith, the evil James Carker, the delightful Toodles, precious Captain Cuttle, strong Susan Nipper, devoted Mr. Toots, and the faithful Walter and Uncle Sol.

One of the things I most appreciated about this story was Dickens' ability and willingness to depict strong women and to show that strength does not exclude deep or motherly feeling. On the other hand, he also showed us some mothers who were unfit to raise kittens, let alone children. Dickens is never afraid of any level of society or any emotion, showing a balanced view of upper and lower classes, and men and women, that I believe was rare in his time.

In addition to loving this book, I must say how much more interesting and meaningful it was to read it with the Dickensians! group. Our leader, the inimitable Bionic Jean, is a wealth of information on both Dickens and his era. She adds another level of understanding to all of his works, and it is a privilege to be allowed to read and discuss with so many intelligent and informed readers. The last time I got this kind of background and information from a group, I was in college and they were making me pay for the course. But, far from feeling like I was sitting in a stuffy classroom, this kind of reading is so, so much fun. I am glad to have now read Dombey and Son. I have four more Dickens novels to read before I can say I have read them all. I have read many of his novels more than once, and I imagine I will be reading them until I take my last breath, because, read them as often as you will, never can you say you have gleaned everything Dickens has to offer. show less