Charles Dickens
1848
1957 Edition
The Heritage Press, New York
800 hefty pages for a serious book club workout.
Overview:
Victorian era macho man rejects daughter.
Summery of the Main Storyline:
1840's London. Mr. Dombey is an arrogant, uptight sort of wealthy gentleman, whose main concern at home is to have a son to continue the 'Dombey and Son' shipping business started by his father. He has a daughter whom he largely ignores and neglects. Finally his wife gives birth to a son, though she dies shortly afterwards, and Mr. Dombey is forced to hire a low-class wet nurse to raise his infant son. Unfortunately, the child grows to be a somewhat sickly boy and eventually dies very young. Though largely unexpressed, Mr. Dombey is devastated by his loss. He continues his emotional and physical alienation from his daughter, who grows into a lovely young lady. He marries again, yet the marriage soon turns bitter and cold, and his second wife ends up betraying him. In all of this, and together with his continued grief, he neglects his business. When Mr. Dombey finds out that his manager has made deceitful and unsound investments, his arrogance and pride make him unable to take necessary actions, and his beloved 'Dombey and Son' is bankrupt. He ends up poor and alone. Eventually his daughter, who has married a clerk from his office, returns and they reconcile.
Review
Mr. Dickens is a well-established and successful writer by the time he is publishing Dombey and Son, and it shows. The writing is very good, smooth and eloquent in the style of the day... and yet it's not a book that comes to mind when thinking about Charles Dickens. In fact, you might not have heard of the story at all. It just goes to show that a great artist doesn't always end up with a masterpiece.
So what makes Dombey and Son well-written, but not so endearing? I'll tell you. The two central characters, Mr. Dombey and his daughter Florence, are rather dull. Take Mr. Dombey first. His obsession for a son to carry on the 'Dombey and Son' business is fueled by extreme arrogance and selfishness that lead him to completely reject his firstborn daughter. That is the basis of the story. Unfortunately, Mr. Dombey turns out to be quite a stiff character, doing little of interest with his pompous attitude. There is no growth nor opening in his conduct or speech the entire book. Only in a final few pages does Mr. Dombey 'realize' the value of his daughter.
And second we have the daughter, Florence, at the center of the story as the focal point of her father's rejection and bitterness. And she is all that a Victorian lady should be - lovely, kind, and dutiful. Unfortunately, she is little more. I feel that Mr. Dickens neglected her somewhat as did his antagonist. Even her love interest feels more platonic than affectionate. Where is her anger and sense of injustice? Her despair? Her joy? Her creative outlet? (Am I asking too much from that era?) Anyway, like her father, she wanders through the story from room to room without doing much.
The best of the drama pertains to Mr. Solomon Gills, a shop owner, and his good friend Captain Cuttle, and also the 'villain' of the story, Mr. Carker. Don't ask me to explain, but here is where there is some emotion, humor, trickery and suspense. These characters, plus a few more, are interesting and entertaining.
The central theme - pride and arrogance will lead to failure and unhappiness - is clear early in the novel, and the reader knows what's coming, yet Dickens draws it out for nearly 800 pages. While the characters of Mr. Dombey and Florence aren't really that awful, their relationship is largely non-existent and cannot support the whole novel. He fills the void with various side stories and pop-in characters, and it works pretty well, but not well enough that 177 years later we remember it à-la A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, or a Tale of Two Cities, among others.
Excuses, excuses: Sombey and Son was originally published in monthly installments over the course of eighteen months, and I wonder how that affects a novel. Though Dickens wrote an initial outline that included major aspects of the story, he wrote the monthly series as it went along. Imagine working on the ending, wishing to go back to chapter three to change a few minor details or dialogue that would work better, but you can't because it was already published a year ago. You can't even go back to the previous section because it was published last week. But to be fair, it was a common practice of the day, and most of Dickens' novels were originally published in this format.
More excuses: While writing Dombey and Sons, Charles Dickens was a busy man. Over the course of those eighteen months his family changed residences twice with hotel stays in between; his wife gave birth to their seventh child and also later had a miscarriage on a train; several of their children were stricken at various times with scarlet fever or whooping cough; Dickens directed, promoted and acted in a play; he established and supervised a home for fallen women in London; plus he was working on other literary projects simultaneously. John T. Winterich writes in his introduction to Dombey and Son titled 'How This Book Came to Be':
Even for a professional novelist, novel-writing is really only a part-time job. He must live two lives - the imaginative inner life of the creative artist, alone with the figments of his fancy, and the shoulder-rubbing external life of one human being in a world of human beings. Charles Dickens lived both of these lives to the hilt.
Dombey and son is still a good novel, even with static central characters, because Charles Dickens was a great writer and he adds enough supporting interest to keep up the pace. But for modern readers, it's outdated in theme and style. Reading today is more of a history lesson that a good story.
To the Author's Credit:
I really like Mr. Dickens' angle on the usual 'We must have a male child to be the heir!' Maybe he was just sympathetic to a daughter's situation, but maybe, too, it provoked a reflection on a tradition that was becoming outdated. However, it took another seventy-five years to end this business of passing over daughters for inheritance and also allowing women to control their own property, those bastards. Let us understand though that the reason for this tradition was essentially to keep a family's wealth intact and in the family. But times change, for better or for worse, and sometimes it's just a perspective.
To the Author's Discredit:
Florence, like any child, longs for her father's love and approval, but at every opportunity she is met with rejection and often scorn. Perhaps a well-bred young lady doesn't yell or openly challenge her father, but, come on, surely she felt more than just 'sad'. There should have been some proper confrontation between them, moments of anger and resentment, some outburst of sorts, yet no. The most she did was finally run away, but even in that she came back begging her father's forgiveness for having left him. Even if Dickens was sympathetic to a daughter in her situation, he certainly didn't understand how it affected her emotionally or mentally.
Best Lines:
Though it would be a cool, business-like, gentlemanly, self-possessed regret, no doubt. (Dombey's way to deal with the death of his wife.)
That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead.
...vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
I love obscure words:
There is a certain degree of languor...(weakness or weariness)
Not having understood the purport of his whisper...(meaning)
...sensible of the indecorum of such sounds in a house of grief...(impropriety)
Going to the very deuce...(Going to ruin)
'honorable captivity' - being employed with very strict conditions. (The wet-nurse was rarely allowed to see her own husband and children.)
Sentences Like This:
"And yet in his pride and jealousy, he viewed with so much bitterness the thought of being dependent for the very first step towards the accomplishment of his soul's desire, on a hired serving woman who would be to the child, for the time, all that even his alliance could have made his own wife, that in every new rejection of a candidate he felt a secret pleasure."
I have read this sentence dozens of times, and I am still not able to understand what he means by "all that even his alliance could have made his own wife,". (Dickens' inflection on the word 'his'.) I understand that overall Mr. Dombey is resentful that he has to be dependent on a low-class wet nurse to care for his son, and so it gives him pleasure to dismiss those that come to apply for the position. But what is all that even his alliance could have made his own wife ?? If someone out there understands, please let me know before I go to my grave in ignorance.
Imagine 800 pages littered with sentences like this.
The original illustrations are by Hablot Knight Browne, penn name 'Phiz', a well-known British illustrator of the day. Mr. Browne was the fourteenth child of fifteen children, but not really. It turns out he was actually the illegitimate child of his (supposedly) oldest sister. When Browne was seven years old, his father abandoned the family, ran off to Philadelphia with embezzled money, and became a painter. Browne himself became an illustrator and he and Dickens came to be good friends. Browne illustrated for many of Dickens' books.
I'm no art expert, but the way he drew some of the people. He should at least have drawn Mr. Dombey somewhat handsome.
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