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Dombey and Son (1846-48) by Charles Dickens is the first of his mature novels and the first in which the thematic design is fully in control of the narrative — a story about Paul Dombey, a cold and prideful businessman who invests his entire emotional life in his son and heir, and who cannot see or value his daughter Florence, who loves him devotedly. The novel is organized around the idea of commercial pride — the Dombey firm, 'Dombey and Son,' names a family as if it were a business, and the novel follows the consequences of treating human relationships as commercial transactions. Paul Dombey Jr. dies in childhood; Florence's goodness is invisible to her father; the second Mrs. Dombey (Edith) rebels against being treated as a purchased commodity and runs away with Dombey's manager Carker; and the firm eventually collapses. The novel's rehabilitation of Florence — Dombey's recognition of his daughter's love in the final sections — is one of Dickens's most emotionally satisfying endings. Little Paul Dombey's death (in Chapter 16) was mourned by readers across England as if a real child had died.
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Dombey and Son (1846)
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Dombey and Son
Charles Dickens·1846
Dombey and Son — Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Dombey and Son considered a turning point in Dickens's career?
Dombey and Son was the first novel Dickens planned in detail before beginning serialization — previous novels had been more improvised, responding to the pressures of weekly or monthly serial deadlines. This planning shows in the novel's thematic coherence: the central idea of commercial pride corrupting human relationships governs every subplot and minor character in ways that the earlier novels' more opportunistic structures could not achieve. The novel also shows Dickens at his most precise in his treatment of class and money, and the character of Edith Dombey — the second wife who refuses submission — is his most complex female character to that point.
Who is Major Bagstock?
Major Joey Bagstock is one of Dickens's great comic grotesques — a purple-faced, self-promoting military man who attaches himself to Dombey for social advancement and facilitates the introduction to Edith. His verbal habit of referring to himself in the third person ('Bagstock is the man for you, sir — Joey B. knows the world') and his constant self-promotion ('Tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!') made him immediately famous among Dickens's contemporary readers. He is also responsible for Dombey's introduction to his second wife, and thus inadvertently for the catastrophe that follows — one of Dickens's characteristic arrangements in which a comic figure produces tragic consequences.
Is the death of Little Paul Dombey the most famous in Victorian fiction?
It is certainly among the most famous — along with the deaths of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop and Jo in Bleak House. Contemporary accounts suggest that the death of Little Paul (Chapter 16, 'What the Waves Were Always Saying') produced the same kind of mass mourning that the death of Little Nell had six years earlier — people weeping in the streets, writing letters to Dickens, memorializing the fictional child as a real loss. The chapter in which Paul dies is deliberately understated, ending with Paul asking his sister 'The old, old fashion — Death!' — and the restraint makes it more moving than more explicit treatments would have been.
Who is Sol Gills, and what is the Wooden Midshipman?
Sol Gills is an elderly ship's instrument maker whose shop, the Wooden Midshipman (named for the wooden figurehead above the door), is the refuge of the novel's sympathetic characters — Florence, Walter Gay (who becomes Florence's eventual husband), and Captain Cuttle, Gills's optimistic, malaprop-prone friend whose arm has been replaced with a hook. The Wooden Midshipman scenes are the warmest in the novel and provide the emotional counterpoint to the cold Dombey house. Captain Cuttle's habit of misquoting the Bible and misattributing quotations — always with great confidence — is one of Dickens's most sustained comic inventions.
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