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    Dombey and Son
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    Dombey and Son
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    Dombey and Son
    Ebook1,447 pages19 hours

    Dombey and Son

    By Charles Dickens

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    About this ebook

    Paul Dombey is a heartless London merchant who runs his domestic affairs as he runs his business. In the tight orbit of his daily life there is no room for dealing with emotions because emotion has no market value. In his son he sees the future of his firm and the continuation of his name, while he neglects his affectionate daughter, until he decides to get rid of her beloved, a lowly clerk. But Dombey's weakness is his pride, and he falls prey to the treacherous flattery of others. Combining an intricate plot, vivid language, and Dickens's customary social commentary, Dombey and Son, explores the possibility of moral and emotional redemption through familial love.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Classics
    Release dateDec 1, 2013
    ISBN9781627938754
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

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    Reviews for Dombey and Son

    4/5

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    • 1/5
      Definitely not Dickens at his best. I would not recommend, even to those who typically enjoy his oeuvre of work. Yuck.
    • 3/5
      A very high three stars. This book has some very funny passages, and a lot of emotion. It's not one of the greatest Dickens works, and it definitely loses some of the drive after the major tragedy one-third of the way into the book, however it is still very interesting, full of fascinating themes and characters. The 14th of Dickens' major works, and the seventh of his novels, Dombey and Son sits very comfortably in the second act of Dickens' life, in which his social and communal responsibilities slightly lowered his novel-writing output, and his desire for integrated works of character growth and investigation - begun with Martin Chuzzlewit - is in full swing.

      Perhaps it's because the first third, with the aching characters of Paul and Flora, and young Paul, is so strong and unified, that the gradual splintering of the plot leads one to feel a little bit underwhelmed as things move toward a climax. The climax itself, being in many ways an emotional rather than narrative one, is also unlike anything Dickens had previously entertained. It's really rather powerful at times. As I said, this is a high three-stars, but it definitely just creeps into my Dickens Top Ten.
    • 3/5
      With the completion of this novel, I have now read every Dickens novel at least once in my lifetime. I have to say this is not one I am likely to read ever again, certainly not in a hurry. I found it difficult to be get absorbed in, in part as there is no strong central character with whom I as a reader can empathise: Paul Dombey senior is a cold and callous father, obsessed with the future of his business and dynasty, and cruelly neglectful of his daughter Florence, especially after the death of his sickly son Paul junior aged six. These offspring are archetypal Dickens child characters: the death of Paul is like a male version of the death of Little Nell in Old Curiosity Shop, while Florence, the leading female character, is a bland and beautiful cipher, arousing sympathy only due to the plight of her near orphan status, abandoned by her father and her mother having died at Paul junior's birth. Edith Skewton, Dombey's second wife is slightly more interesting and tragic in a different way, having been effectively "bought" by her husband as a trophy wife. As often, some of the lesser characters are more interesting and colourful, such as Mr Toots, Susan Nipper, Old Mrs Brown, and Captain Cuttle. Dickens's usual portrayals of abject poverty are rarer in this novel, mostly through the tragic figure of Alice, Good Mrs Brown's betrayed daughter. There is a much redemption and a lot of marriages in the last few chapters. As a curiosity, this novel also gives an interesting description of the coming of the railways in the 1830s, depicting them as a noisy and chaotically violent disruption of the landscape.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      I found this a bit hard-going in places. Highlights included Captain Cuttle's fear of Mrs MacStinger, little Paul's conquering of Mrs Pipchin, all the scenes at the Blimbers and any including Mr Toots. Mr Dombey and Mr Carker were excellent villains. But... Alice and her mother were tiresome, I found it hard to believe in the friendship between Mr Dombey and Major Bagstock, Edith behaved incomprehensibly to me from start to finish, Mr Morfin pops up more or less from nowhere and then there is Florence. Florence is unrelentingly perfect and the idea that she would ask her father for forgiveness for leaving him was too much!
    • 3/5
      Among all of the Dickens books I've read, this one probably falls in the middle -- not a favorite like Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend, but still a good story. This one is centered around Paul Dombey, a wealthy businessman who longs to pass along his wealth, name and business acumen to his son. But his son dies young and he is left with a daughter who he basically ignores. Like so many of Dickens other stories, this is filled with a cast of very distinct supporting characters, who often carry the story. The audiobook is excellently performed by Frederick Davidson.
    • 4/5
      Recently listened to this book again. Found the reading a bit overdone (the second reader I tried and this can be a problem consistently with Dickens audiobooks). But I love Dickens. This, while not my favorite, is a satisfying read. Faling into the verbal world of a long book (enjoying much on the long Christmas drive between California and Washington) is one of life's true pleasures.
    • 3/5
      One of Dickens' longest novels charts the history of the Dombey family - the father who owns the business and wants to leave it to his son, and the daughter he ignores. Not Dickens' best - the novel needs more focus than it has, and moves too slowly. There's his common problem as well, that the daughter Florence is an odd mix of purity and total lack of self-esteem; she is hard to believe in, and occasionally made me uncomfortable when her endlessly submissive behaviour was presented as some sort of feminine ideal. That said, there is some great writing, some fun characters and great scenes, even if he never really nails it like he does in other books. One for Dickens completists.
    • 4/5
      I'm actually surprised that this one isn't covered more in schools, except for the length. Which is extreme, even for a Dickens novel. It is an interesting story and somewhat complex. I have to say that the character of Edith was more interesting to me than most of the other Dombeys, but she seemed less like a caricature than many of Dickens's characters. All that rage is certainly something.

      Anyway. Lovely read.
    • 4/5
      It was a happy day when I, for whatever reason, elected to sample Charles Dickens. Having read A Tale of Two Cities in high school, I digressed to more popular fiction (Michener, Clavell, McMurtry, King, Grisham), as well as periods of science fiction and even non-fiction (Ambrose, McCollough for example), before making an effort to upgrade my reading list.I read some Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck and Hemingway with mixed success before reading Great Expectations. I liked it enough to read David Copperfield, and I was hooked. A Tale of Two Cities followed and then Oliver Twist (not my favorite), Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit and The Pickwick Papers before taking on this door stop of a novel.Many of Dickens’s works tend to be lengthy and excessively wordy, perhaps due to their nature of having been serialized prior to being printed in a single volume. Heretofore, I haven’t found that trait particularly annoying or troublesome, however this book proved to be an exception. I can usually read for a couple of hours before going to sleep, but found myself nodding off after only 20-30 minutes of Dombey. There are fantastic characters here, as in all of Dickens’s work, but they tend to be smothered by the frequently flowery and seemingly never ending prose.As in other Dickens works, a period of acclimation is required to become comfortable with the vocabulary and social conventions of the era. Having read almost all of Dickens’s work, I would have to rank this as my least favorite.
    • 4/5
      Although this is not one of Dickens’ more well-known novels, and it is described as problematic, I found it quite engrossing and rewarding. Certainly, it does not have the lightheartedness of some of Dickens’ other novels, and in the psychological complexity, it reminded me more of Henry James than of Dickens. Chronologically, it comes just before his more mature biographical books, and looks like a step towards those books.The story of Paul Dombey junior, who has a sad life and dies early, is sentimental, although Dickens shows his skill in touching the reader in such a simple story. The story of Paul Dombey senior is sadder in his (almost) life-long arrogance, pride and emotional withdrawal. His sentimental turn at the end is undeserved, merely the contrivance needed to make the Victorian readers buy the next issue. The story of Mrs. Dombey, although heavily contrived as well, is the set-up needed to explore the relationship between Dombey and those around him. She is excluded from power by the social mores of the time, and escapes only be running away with her cousin, but the psychological fight between her and her husband is epic. It makes the pain, fury and frustration of her situation clear, and could stand as an early look at women’s property and marital rights, much like the Galsworthy saga did much later.The story of Florence, Dombey’s daughter, is the emotional centre of the story, although a highly idealized one, weakened for a modern audience by her flawless purity and self-sacrifice. In spite of that, a reader has to sympathize with her as a lonely, motherless child who wants only to get some recognition from her father but who is completely ignored by him. When she is used as a tool to poison and manipulate the life of her step-mother, you have to feel for her emotional anguish, and feel relief when she is finally able to leave the family home and find a blissful life with her true love.The minor characters, as in the best of Dickens, are droll and entertaining caricatures. Their sub-plots are not very credible, but they lighten a tone that would otherwise be very somber, and they also give a social context in which the psychological drama of the main characters has to be understood.This was a long slow read, but I enjoyed coming back to it and felt some sadness as it came to its final end.
    • 4/5
      4 1/2 stars is what I'd like to give... Very Dickensian, which I love, with a large cast of characters & trials and tribulations ending with punishment for the wicked and virtue rewarded.
    • 4/5
      This novel has it all, the amazing names, the odd characters, the social commentary. Dickens seems to have attempted here a novelization of a Greek classical tragedy, but in the end, after hubris brings ruin, Dickens wraps up almost all the plot threads with marriages and general felicity. Good reading, especially on a long plane flight or three!
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5

      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 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.

      "
    • 4/5
      Memorable for the passage in which Dickens gives vent to his belief that industrialisation is dehumanising his society. He uses the story of a man so absorbed by the nature of business and trade that he renders all human interaction as an exchange. In this novel Dickens wants 'to take the rooftops off' expose the consequences of the rapid development of manufacturing. He brilliantly makes the train an engine of destruction yet is clearly mesmerised by it. Some wonderful passages and not too many of his usual digressions.
    • 3/5
      Dickens' seventh major work, and about half-way through his life's works (which I am reading/re-reading in his 200th anniversary year).While earlier works have a "boys own annual" feel to them, this is a more mature and complex book. While Dickens still annoys with his fantastic coincidences to bring his artificial plots together, in this book there are some interesting and developed characters. Florence, who feels it is somehow her fault that her father doesn't love her, has a modern feel. A comment passed about Dombey, who is obsessively proud, is informative: "Vices are sometimes virtues taken to excess".I find it interesting that in his works, Dickens has multiple examples of strong, loving, brother-sister relationships, but almost no happy married couples of any depth. I wonder what this tells of his own background?Darwin continues his social themes, in this work he often highlights the "depravity" deplored by the upper class is often a result of the blighted environment of the poorer peoples. He also points out that the same "depravity" has different consequences in different social stratas - the upper class can effectively sell daughters into a moneyed marriage, while the same process is called prostitution further down the social scale.I see in Wikipedia that an early critic faulted the plot structure, saying that the death of Dombey Junior was effectively the end of the story, but I didn't find that fault. It was clear that Florence was going to be the hero - would she become the surrogate son? Would she be successful in some other way? Would there be a future marriage and further son? Many possibilities.The book is L O N G, as usual. And Dickens tests his readers. A Mr Morfin re-appears on page 681. How many readers recall his last appearance on page 175?? I could only do so courtesy of the word search function in ebooks. The book also has the usual complement of comic characters who regularly appear and regularly use the same "gags" for the same laughs: Capt Cuttle using nonsense nautical jargon; Major Bagstock endlessly referring to himself in the third person, and many other formulaic characters. It would seem that these were popular and sold the monthly parts. :) So, a good book, with many of the usual flaws of Dickens, balanced by some vibrant writing. Read February 2012.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book, even though it's sort of standard Dickens and the outcome is no surprise. Still, the writing is so delightful, and the characters are varied and complex. I especially like the focus on women, and the fact that he made many of the female characters multi-dimensional.
    • 4/5
      In Dombey and Son Dickens demonstrates the biting satire and the more expansive social criticism of his later work. Dombey is a proud business man and wants an heir. He is cold an distant to his children, especially young Paul his "son" who is frail and after some time at a boarding school dies. His second marriage becomes its own nightmare. In Dombey Dickens begins using a thematic symbol or motif and continues this practice for his longer works - here the railroads become a symbol of progress and brute force.The plot is surprisingly linear for such a long Dickens novel. He has broken out of the more episodic nature of his early novels and begins to more effectively portray the psychology of the characters. This novel is too often overlooked but it is a fine work of the author's early maturity. While I do not like it as much as the two novels which immediately follow, David Copperfield and Bleak House, it is still vintage Dickens.
    • 4/5
      Cap'n ahoy? I stand, good sir, a week done of strenuous climbing, cliff upon cliff, at the very last able to plant my flag on Mt. Dombey - nine hundred and three pages above sea-level. Oh, a little weak in the knees, and a touch dizzy - my heart racing from the rareified atmospheres and sentiments - but remembering clearly, and with great affection, and oddly, you of all people, my dear Cap'n Cuttle.Your visage nows appears to me in a cloud on a sea blue sky. How I could have used your hooked and sinewy arm on some of those overhanging participles, me slipping like a cabin boy on a soapy deck, trying for footage on a suddenly subjunctive clause!Climb from your cloud frigate, kind sir, and shout "Hooroar for Ganeshaka! Hooroar the flag!" Hum a few bars of pretty Peg. Mightn't you have a musty bottle of old Madeira squirreled away in your sea galley to brighten a weary mate's heart chambers. Wouldn't ye now? Ye might indeed. Old and gold Madeira? Ye would, Ye would indeed. Gold, ayn't it? It is. Ayn't it? It is indeed.O.Kee.then.Let's wipe the slate clean, and pretend neither you or I ever heard of Dickens. No Christmas Carol. No David Copperfield. No Tale of Two Cities. Just Dombey and Son. What sort of novel is this?A very long elaborately crafted overly sentimental exposition of a truth and a dream. The truth, pride goeth before a fall. The dream, the meek shall inherit the earth.Elaborately crafted but not all that readable. I found myself in a fugue state recalling eight grade homework. Reverting to my younger self, like Paul Dombey, grimly puzzling over sentence diagrams. Imagining what a line like the following would parse to: "But in admitting to himself with a disappointed and creastfallen countenance, that Sol Gillis must be told, and that Walter must go - taking the case for the present as he found it, and not having it enlightened or improved beforehand by the knowing management of a friend - the captain still felt an unabated confidence that he,Ned Cuttle, was the man for Mr.Dombey,and that to set Walter's fortunes quite square, nothing was wanted but that they two should come together."I'm pretty sure that if diagrammed correctly, the above sentence would resemble exactly a dynastic chart showing the connections between the House of Hanover and the Romanovs.Dickens did write his novels in installments, for serial publication. I hope I don't appear overtly cynical by surmising he often succumbed to the temptation to throw in a superfluous sentence or three. Just to make his thirty two pages deadline. Like who'd ever know?And yes, Dombey and Son is a wee bit sentimental. Were he writing Bush and Son instead, Dickens would surely end up with George Walker blessing daughter Barbara's marriage to Michael Moore, and their infant son Georgie Sicko III, born in Cuba with the finest of medical care. While Cheney and Obama swapped family barbeque sauce recipes at the christening, and started a friendly water fight at the baptismal font.But still, but still...this is Charles (why-no-middle-name?) Dickens. He does have a 24 carat heart of gold. And sentimentality sells Kleenex, after all. And you do get caught up in the tale, and the prose - and if my pithy style has been ruined by contamination - so what? And Florence IS a lovely girl, and true. And Walter's the finest of fellows.I am intrigued, after it all, to learn more about Dickens life. I shall seek out a good biography. And I would like to read a few of his darker novels. He does "get it" - the ills of industrialization, classism, and human vanity. And he is, in some passages, like an episode of Frontline or 20/20 in a steampunk kinda way. And like the Wright Bros at Kitty Hawk, he does have these lovely lyrical lift offs - from time to time. It's fascinating to speculate what type of novels he might write if he were alive today with a brush as broad and a heart as big as he had. And if he would remain as sentimental, or given our tastes write as gory as an episode of CSI.
    • 4/5
      Merely finishing this beast of novel gives me a sense of accomplishment. This edition is 833 pages of small type, without a single blank page or added space, not even for the beginnings of chapters. Let’s estimate: 12 words per line, 39 lines per page, 833 pages equals 489,844 words, minus about 20 or 25 percent for white space gives us almost 400 thousand words. That’s four times the size of a modern novel.I spent about a month wading through this (while reading, and finishing, several other more modern novels, at the same time), and it was worth every bit of the effort. This may be my new favorite Dickens’ novel. It’s definitely more mature than “David Copperfield”, more satisfying than “A Tale of Two Cities”, more convincing than “Bleak House”. All the elements we expect from Dickens are here: the settings, the unforgettable characters, the compassion, the sentimentalism. And the female character that is too good to be true, as well - she always seems to show up in a Dickens novel somewhere, and in this case, regardless of the title, she is at the center of all the activity.And, as usual, Dickens cannot resist wrapping up every character, no matter how insignificant, and bringing everyone, no matter how wicked or debased, to an appropriate end as elevated as he can manage.So put this novel on your nightstand and chip away at it gradually for a month or so - it will be well worth the effort.
    • 5/5
      For a long time, I shied away from reading this Dickens novel. This was at least in part because the title Dombey and Son isn't exactly arresting. It was a shock, then, to not only thoroughly enjoy the book, but also realize that it could have almost as easily been titled Mr. Toots and the Game Chicken.