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 tropesStock characters Highly contrastive settings Agonistically toned

All these techniques make a character and plot more memorable.

Publication TimelineDombey and Son was originally published in 19 monthly installments

I – October 1846 (chapters 1–4);

II – November 1846 (chapters 5–7);

III – December 1846 (chapters 8–10);

IV – January 1847 (chapters 11–13);

V – February 1847 (chapters 14–16);

VI – March 1847 (chapters 17–19);

VII – April 1847 (chapters 20–22);

VIII – May 1847 (chapters 23–25);

IX – June 1847 (chapters 26–28);

X – July 1847 (chapters 29–31);

XI – August 1847 (chapters 32–34);

XII – September 1847 (chapters 35–38);

XIII – October 1847 (chapters 39–41);

XIV – November 1847 (chapters 42–45);

XV – December 1847 (chapters 46–48);

XVI – January 1848 (chapters 49–51);

XVII – February 1848 (chapters 52–54);

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

Light

Darkness

Dombey and Son

Darkness

Light

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

Unloving

Distant and Removed

Quick tempered

Imperious

Unreasonable

Unyielding

Inflexible

Arrogant

Uninformed

Uncurious

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?