No. V (Chs. 14-16)
This deviates from the structure of the last couple installments. Instead of going Paul→Paul→someone else (probably Walter), here we get Paul→someone else (indeed, Walter)→Paul. In the first chapter, Paul and Florence attend an end-of-term party for the students at Paul's school, but Paul suffers an attack of illness. The whole chapter has a kind of dreamlike quality, and though the installment came out in February, and the party actually precedes summer break, it actually felt very appropriate to read it in December; tonally, it felt very appropriate for Christmas, with its nostalgic, wistful tone.
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens |
 |
|
Originally published: 1846-48 Acquired: December 2024 Installment read: December 2024 |
There's also some good jokes about an eternal Dickens bugaboo, the oversystematization of that which should not be systematized. In this case, there's a funny bit about how the teachers at Paul's school rate him at 6¾ on a scale of one to eight for "natural capacity" and "general disposition to study"... though only at a four for "gentlemanly demeanour" (208). Paul, however, is "undecided whether six three-fourths, meant six pounds fifteen, or sixpence three farthings, or six foot three, or three quarters past six, or six somethings that he hadn’t learnt yet, with three unknown something elses over"!
Incidentally, when sick, Paul perceives things around them changing size and position; it seemed to me that this could be (based on my limited understanding) an example of a malady named after a different Victorian novel, Alice in Wonderland syndrome, but in some quick Googling, anyway, I didn't find anyone else making that connection to Dombey and Son. Maybe I don't understand AIWS, or maybe I misread the novel? For example, it's noted that "Mr Toots’s head had the appearance of being at once bigger and farther off than was quite natural" (213). It's very vivid, though, making me wonder if Dickens himself suffered from it at some point.
The Walter bit goes on a bit too long, like all the other ones, but we do see that Walter is beginning to invest himself emotionally in Florence. Florence, incidentally, is probably the Dickens girlest Dickens girl who ever Dickens girled, being a beautiful naïve slip of a girl who the men adore. The statement that she was "something precious, unattainable, unchangeable, and indefinite – indefinite in all but its power of giving him pleasure, and restraining him like an angel’s hand from anything unworthy" (243) could sum up so many of Dickens's female characters.
The big spoiler for this section—which I did not know going in, so avert your eyes if you want that to be true of you as well—is that the "Son" of Dombey and Son is no more following this section. That's right, Paul dies one-quarter of the way into the novel of which he is one-half of the title!
I did not see this turn of events, partially for that reason, and partially because it seemed like we were in for a very typical Dickens formula: the bildungsroman about a boy with an emotionally deprived childhood, e.g., Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), David Copperfield (1849-50), Great Expectations (1860-61). I would say it's clever of Dickens to subvert your expectations that way... except that two of those examples postdate this novel, so it wasn't a formula yet! But anyway, it's a very effective piece of writing either way, Dickens at his sentimental best. He would bring himself to tears reading the chapter aloud at public performances, apparently; I would have loved to see and hear such a thing.
No. VI (Chs. 17-19)
'Wal'r,' said the Captain, handing it [the watch] over, and shaking him heartily by the hand, 'a parting gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour every morning, and about another quarter towards the afternoon, and it’s a watch that’ll do you credit.' (300)
The first and third chapters here are about Captain Cuttle and Walter respectively, and they're fine for what they are. (Is Captain Cuttle the character my friend said I'd like?) But the clear standout here is the middle chapter, "Father and Daughter," about how Florence is mourning the death of her brother Paul and how her father just doesn't care for her or her feelings in any way, shape, or form.
I occasionally have remarked that I want to have more access to Florence's interiority, but I think I'm just projecting my twenty-first-century expectations onto this novel. Dickens wasn't a realist, like those Victorian writers that came after him, such as George Eliot or Elizabeth Gaskell, his project wasn't to reveal character by taking you into someone's head. Dickens reveals character through dialogue and action. In the realist novel, you have this artifice, that the narrator somehow knows what Hetty Sorell or Molly Gibson were thinking. Dickens projects no such artifice—well, he projects a different one. His narrators never claim to know what someone is thinking, only what someone is saying and doing. Imagine someone else telling you the story of Florence Dombey because it was real; they wouldn't give you her thoughts via free indirect discourse or something because they don't know them. But what they could tell was what she did, how she looked out at the happy family across the street every day, and that would be enough to let you know how she felt, because that's how humans always figure out how each other feel. You need to imagine a Dickens novel is being related to you by a friend who knows the story in detail.
So of course we don't have access to Florence's interiority, and you should stop hoping for it! Dickens does a great job of communicating what's going on inside her regardless, particularly in that devastating scene where Florence goes to see her father.
I don't think this is an absolute; clearly we do get a bit of Paul's interiority in his last couple chapters, as he's dying. But it's not a move Dickens makes a lot, and he only deploys it to make a particularly strong point. His next novel after Dombey and Son would be David Copperfield, which is (I believe) his first told in the first person, so we finally do get that dose of interiority... but the old-fashioned way. He would use it in just two other novels, both ones I rank among his best, Great Expectations and Bleak House (1852-53).
No. VII (Chs. 20-22)
'You are too great a man, Dombey, to be thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you’re far above that kind of thing.' (314)
This is probably the first installment of Dombey and Son that I found ho-hum. It had its moments, but none of the three chapters was a great one. In the first, Dombey hangs out with a new character, Major Joe Bagstock—he's who I've quoted above, and he is in general quite funny. In the second, Dombey and Bagstock go on a trip and bump into Mrs Richards, who reveals her eldest son (whose education Dombey sponsored) has gone bad. In the third, said son shows up at Dombey and Son looking for a job so he can straighten himself out, and doesn't get one directly, but Dombey's clerk gets him a placement with Walter's uncle, the instument-maker. (Walter himself is missing, his ship unheard of since its departure.)
It's all fine, and definitely there are some great bits, but it felt to me like things were being moved into position for the next phase of the story—whatever that may be.
This is the second in a series of posts about Dombey and Son. The next covers installment no. viii and beyond. Previous installments are listed below:
- Nos. I–IV (chs. 1-13)
