Dombey and Son
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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. See Dickens ; Charles
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The plot Aiton's set out in 1910 is still the plot, and Dickens's own words still do the work. What has shifted is the estimate: where Aiton's says that "as usual, the interest is in the characters, rather than in the story," twentieth-century critics came to prize Dombey and Son precisely for its design, since it was the first novel Dickens plotted out in advance in detailed number plans, built throughout around a single theme of pride. Modern readers also make much of something the old notice passes over entirely: this is Dickens's railway novel, with the new line tearing through Staggs's Gardens and finally killing Carker, so that the book is now read as a record of what steam did to London. The one thing that has lost ground is Little Paul, whose deathbed was wept over across two continents in 1847 and is now the chapter most often cited as evidence of Victorian sentimentality.
Written for this edition, 2026.