Dealings with the Firm of
Dombey and Son,
Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation
by Charles Dickens
Great Books Series
Keith Geekie, Presenter
January 25, 2017
Dickens’ Career
1812 – 1870
Victoria’s Reign: 1837- 1901
Dickens Novels
The Pickwick Papers – 1836
Oliver Twist – 1837
Nicholas Nickleby – 1838
The Old Curiosity Shop – 1840
Barnaby Rudge – 1841
Martin Chuzzlewit – 1843
Dombey and Son – 1846
David Copperfield – 1849
Bleak House – 1852
Hard Times – 1854
Little Dorrit – 1855
A Tale of Two Cities – 1859
Great Expectations – 1860
Our Mutual Friend – 1864
The Mystery of Edwin Drood – 1870
The Rise of Steam Powered Machines
The Industrial Revolution in Britain
Events in the British Industrial Revolution
1816: George Stephenson patented a steam engine locomotive that ran on rails.
1825: Stephenson commissioned to construct a 30-mile railway from Liverpool to
Manchester.
1829: Stephenson’s Rocket wins the speed contest on the new Liverpool to Manchester
railroad. 51 miles of railroad track in Great Britain and the entire world.
1832: Sadler Committee investigates child labor in factories and issues report to
Parliament.
1833: The first Factory Act provides first small regulation of child labor in textile
factories.
1834: Poor Law created “poorhouses” for the destitute.
1835: 106,000 power looms operating in Great Britain.
1849: 6,031 miles of railroad track in Great Britain.
Railway Mania
The success of Stephenson’s train caught the public’s imagination and so-called
“Railway Mania” took place.
Railways were seen as a way of earning a fortune. Between 1825 and 1835,
Parliament agreed to the building of 54 new rail lines. From 1836 to 1837, 39
new lines were agreed to. By 1900, Britain had 22,000 miles of rail track.
Sail Gives Way to Steam
J M W Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire
Dombey and Son
Dickens the Serial Novelist
“Dickens was a serial novelist, and as Priestly observes, he was “so striking
and powerful a public figure that, increasingly, it was as if he were almost
writing his novels in public.”
Dombey and Son was published in 19 numbers (each containing 3 or 4
chapters) from 1846 - 1848, when Dickens was in his early 30s.
Oral Tradition
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein
knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved and
transmitted orally from one generation to another. The transmission is
through speech or song and may include folktales, ballads, chants, prose
or verses.
Dickens’ Oral Traditional Techniques
Repetition
Intrusive narrator
Shifting with the views of the audience
A knowledge of a Dickens tradition in which the novel is produced
References to familiar story materials and tropes
Stock characters
Highly contrastive settings
Agonistically toned
All these techniques make a character and plot more memorable.
Publication Timeline
Dombey and Son was originally published in 19 monthly installments
I – October 1846 (chapters 1–4);
X – July 1847 (chapters 29–31);
II – November 1846 (chapters 5–7);
XI – August 1847 (chapters 32–34);
III – December 1846 (chapters 8–10);
XII – September 1847 (chapters 35–38);
IV – January 1847 (chapters 11–13);
XIII – October 1847 (chapters 39–41);
V – February 1847 (chapters 14–16);
XIV – November 1847 (chapters 42–45);
VI – March 1847 (chapters 17–19);
XV – December 1847 (chapters 46–48);
VII – April 1847 (chapters 20–22);
XVI – January 1848 (chapters 49–51);
VIII – May 1847 (chapters 23–25);
XVII – February 1848 (chapters 52–54);
IX – June 1847 (chapters 26–28);
XVIII – March 1848 (chapters 55–57);
XIX-XX – April 1848 (chapters 58–62).
The Set Up of the Novel
Dombey, Son and Daughter
And again he said ‘Dombey and Son,’ in exactly the same tone as before.
Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey’s life. The
earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon
were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their
ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or
against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits, to
preserve inviolate a system of which they were the center. Common
abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to
them. A. D. had no concern with Anno Domini, but stood for anno
Dombei—and Son.
They had been married ten years, and until this present day on which
Mr. Dombey sat jingling and jingling his heavy gold watch-chain in the
great arm-chair by the side of the bed, had had no issue.
—To speak of; none worth mentioning. There had been a girl some six
years before, and the child, who had stolen into the chamber
unobserved, was now crouching timidly, in a corner whence she could
see her mother’s face. But what was a girl to Dombey and Son! In the
capital of the House’s name and dignity, such a child was merely a piece
of base coin that couldn’t be invested—a bad Boy—nothing more.
Major Characters
Paul Dombey – Owner of Dombey and Son
Little Paul – His Son and Heir
Florence (Floy) – His Daughter
Walter Gay – Dombey’s employee and nephew of Sol Gils (proprietor of the
navigational equipment shop)
Carker – His Right-hand Man
Edith – His Second Wife
About 100 other characters as well
Stock Characters
Edith: Tragedy queen
Bagstock: choleric old soldier
Captain Cuttle: bluff comic sailor
Walter Gay: Romantic lead
Mr. Toodle: honest working man
Victorian Stereotypes
Victorian Paterfamilias
• The Remote 19th century father
• Sons at Boarding School
• Authority Figure Requiring Deference
• Benevolent Reputation
Victorian Angel in the House
The Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman was "the Angel in the
House.” “The Angel was passive and powerless, meek, charming,
graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all--pure.”
The phrase "Angel in the House" comes from the title of an immensely
popular poem by Coventry Patmore, in which he holds his angel-wife up
as a model for all women.
Victorian Sentimentality
“We may define sentimentality as a writer's consciously indulging in
emotion for its own sake, pushing the reader to emotional peaks through
exaggeration, manipulation of language and situation, and such
mechanical tricks as dwelling on the suffering and purity of a dying
child.”
Dickens Letter to Forster,
December 1846
“Paul, I shall slaughter at the end of number five."
Contrastive Approach to the Novel
Opening out the novel to meaning and resonance
Typical Critical Analysis or Assaults
Victorian Sentimentality
Cheesy Thematic Analysis
Lack of Narrative Coherence and Structural Integrity
Stereotypes without Psychological Depth
Moral Platitudes
Marxist or Freudian analysis
Simple Victorian Social History
Overwrought Melodrama
Artistry Lies in Contrasts
How do opposites create meaning?
Inside vs. Outside
Alienation vs. Community
Borders, walls, bindings, thresholds
Diffuse, blurred, disorganized, lost
Textual Tensions Approach
Oppositional Absolutes
Pride / Humility
Darkness / Light
Sorrow / Joy
Destruction / Creation
Success / Failure
Steam / Sail
Wealth / Poverty
Male / Female
In the novel there is no reconciliation as
such between the competing forces.
Borders are never benign constructs.
Beowulf
Darkness
Light
Dombey and Son
Light
Darkness
Beowulf
Hrothgar vs. Grendel
The Gold-hall vs. Exile
A fair dwelling world vs. the wandering walker in shadows
The shapes of darkness come to wander black under the clouds toward
the object of jealousy and revenge
Thesis: The Oppositional Structure
The Works are Mirror Images
Dombey is Darkness and Grendel pulled to the center of society and
valorized. Exiled made respectable
Florence is the great gold-hall of light reduced to flickers out on the
misty borders – there with the border steppers and the shadow walkers –
which accounts for sentimentality, at the very least.
Mr. Dombey’s Central Darkness
Proud
Unyielding
Unloving
Inflexible
Distant and Removed
Arrogant
Quick tempered
Uninformed
Imperious
Uncurious
Unreasonable
Reckless
The Christening Dinner Party
There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so bitter cold that it
forced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great difficulty in
turning into a 'Hem!' The veal had come from such an airy pantry, that
the first taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead to Mr Chick's
extremities. Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He might have been
hung up for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen gentleman.
The prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no
effort at flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts to looking as
warm as she could.
And so she would have done. But in his frenzy, he lifted up his cruel arm,
and struck her, crosswise, with that heaviness, that she tottered on the
marble floor; and as he dealt the blow, he told her what Edith was, and
bade her follow her, since they had always been in league. She did not
sink down at his feet; she did not shut out the sight of him with her
trembling hands; she did not weep; she did not utter one word of
reproach. But she looked at him, and a cry of desolation issued from her
heart. For as she looked, she saw him murdering that fond idea to which
she had held in spite of him. She saw his cruelty, neglect, and hatred
dominant above it, and stamping it down. She saw she had no father
upon earth, and ran out, orphaned, from his house.
A moment, and her hand was on the lock, the cry was on her lips, his
face was there, made paler by the yellow candles hastily put down and
guttering away, and by the daylight coming in above the door. Another
moment, and the close darkness of the shut-up house (forgotten to be
opened, though it was long since day) yielded to the unexpected glare
and freedom of the morning; and Florence, with her head bent down to
hide her agony of tears, was in the streets.
.
Fleeing from the Center
This approach towards business and community does not produce loyalty or sympathy
or genuine human relationship.
“The House is a ruin, and the rats fly from it.”
As a result, Mr. Dombey, abandoned, walks the tracks of exile, in the end, much like
Grendel does.
Florence’s Scattered Light
Loving
Kind
Brave
The wandering no one’s child
Self-educated
Accomplished
Dedicated
Forgiving
Loyal
Lonely
Changing
Organic
Natural
Florence’s Proposal & Loyalty
'If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you
will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without fear. I
can give up nothing for you— I have nothing to resign, and no one to
forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last
breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left.'
Dombey and Son presents “a realm of self-enclosed milieus, of the
impossibility of communication between people, of triumphant solitude . . . “
J. Hillis Miller: Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels
Edith’s Failure of Curiosity and Imagination
I needed to have allowed more for the causes that had made him what he
was. I will try, then, to forgive him his share of blame.
.
The Society of the Hearth
Mr. Dombey’s collapse – The great house was down
Florence’s rise – She returns from distant seas
Dombey and Son was “Dombey and Daughter after all” resolves the plot
Beneath the novel’s surface is the struggling of opposites that made
Victorian civilization and our own so restless and alienating.
Questions?