Dombey and Son
a novel by Charles Dickens published in serial form, beginning in October, 1846. It appeared in book form in 1848. Mr. Dombey is an aristocratic, proud, stern, unfeeling man; his only passion is a love for his little son Paul, a delicate child, who dies young. Florence Dombey is unable to win her father's affection, and is driven finally from home. Disappointed in a worldly ambition to perpetuate the name of the firm; hated by his proud and disdainful second wife, and disgraced by her elopement; bankrupted by venturesome investments, the haughty Dombey is at last utterly broken and subdued. Now the neglected daughter returns and devotes herself to making her father's last days a time of peace. As usual in Dickens' stories, there are many minor plots and side issues. As usual, too, the interest is in the characters, rather than in the story. Mr. Dombey, Little Paul, Edith Granger, Mrs. Skewton, the Carkers, Captain Cuttle, Joey Bagstock, Old Sol Gills, and Dr. Blimber are real people whom we have seen and known, and who cannot be forgotten. Two paragraphs, one from the opening, another from the closing chapter of Mr. Dombey's career, give a glimpse of his character and of the changes wrought therein:
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.
For the night of his worldly ruin there was no tomorrow's sun; for the stain of his domestic shame there was no purification; nothing, thank Heaven, could bring his dead child back to life. But that which he might have made so different in all the Past--which might have made the Past itself so different, though this he hardly thought of now--that which was his own work, that which he could so easily have wrought into a blessing, and had set himself so steadily for years to form into a curse; that was the sharp grief of his soul.