Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son, Nos. VIII–X (Chs. 23-31)

No. VIII (Chs. 23-25)
Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles, very good people, resided in a pretty villa at Fulham, on the banks of the Thames; which was one of the most desirable residences in the world when a rowing-match happened to be going past, but had its little inconveniences at other times, among which may be enumerated the occasional appearance of the river in the drawing-room, and the contemporaneous disappearance of the lawn and shrubbery. (375)

I feel like Dombey and Son is drifting a bit in this installment, languishing. It's not bad... but I'm also still not quite clear where the novel is going following from the death of Paul Dombey. In these chapters, we follow Florence mostly, with a bit also about Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle. Probably this is all going somewhere... but where?

Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens

Originally published: 1846-48
Acquired: December 2024
Installments read: January 2025

If the novel has a main point, though, it's clearly Florence's emotional deprivation. In this installment, Florence overhears the aunt of an orphan talking to her charge about Florence: "your misfortune is a lighter one than Florence’s; for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent’s love" (381). There are a lot of emotionally deprived orphans (or seeming orphans, e.g., Great Expectations) in Dickens, but (perhaps I'm forgetting something) I can't think of any nonorphans so deprived as Florence. How bad is it to have a parent who doesn't love you, doesn't even hate you, just doesn't think of you at all? All the stuff about Florence is sort of quietly devastating, and for me anyway, she's emerging as one of Dickens's best female characters. 

I'm not really sure where this is all going to go, but I continue to mostly enjoy the journey.

No. IX (chs. 26-28)
Am I hitting some kind of mid-book slump? Again, an installment I was mostly pretty "meh" on—except for the stuff about Florence, of course, who I continue to have great empathy for. I think the problem is when there's too much stuff about Dombey himself (and his social circle). But all that does lead somewhere in this one, which is... Dombey is getting remarried! What implications will this have for Florence, who doesn't even get to meet her new mother prior to the engagement? I would say it can't make her life worse, but there's over half the novel to go, so it probably will.

What is up with Mr Carker? I don't trust that guy. You might object to a key character only emerging halfway through a novel, but I guess that's serialization for you. Indeed, I like the way he's slowly emerging as a figure of significance. (Douglas Adams does something similar with a minor character in the Doctor Who serial The Pirate Planet.) ((I am willing to bet no one has ever compared these two texts before.))

No. X (chs. 29-31)
Say what you will about our man Charles Dickens, but he knows how to pace a serial. Dombey and Son consists of nineteen parts, but the last is double-length (a two-part finale), so the end of installment no. x is the exact midpoint of the novel. At the end of the first quarter, Paul Dombey died; at the end of the second quarter, Mr Dombey gets remarried.

But poor Florence! What is going to happen to her? Dombey's new in-laws are clearly up to something (I am a bit worried I should know what this is but that I glazed over it when I was bored in a previous installment, but I'm sure I'll figure it out), and Dombey's new wife clearly has regrets about it... but is willing to go forward with the plan anyway.

This installment basically totally revolves around the lead-up to the wedding. It has been a while, actually, since we have checked in on some of the side characters. Soon, I am guessing? But in the meantime, I continue to be very into the trajectory of Florence, surely one of Dickens's most put-upon female characters!

This is the third in a series of posts about Dombey and Son. The next covers installment no. xi and beyond. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Nos. I–IV (chs. 1-13)
2. Nos. V–VII (chs. 14-22)