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The idea of the novel “dombey and son”

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DENOV ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND
PEDAGOGICAL INSTITUTE
“_______________________” FACULTY
“_____________________________” DIRECTION
_______ - GROUP STUDENT
_______________________________ OF
PREPARED ON THE SUBJECT
COURSE WORK
THEME: THE IDEA OF THE NOVEL “DOMBEY AND SON”
PREPARED : ______________
TEACHER:______________
1

THEME: THE IDEA OF THE NOVEL “DOMBEY AND SON”
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
I. CHAPTER. CHARLES DICKENS.
1.1. Biography of Charles Dickens .
1.2. Career.
II.CHAPTER. THE IDEA OF THE NOVEL “DOMBEY AND SON”
2.1. Information about Dombey and son.
2.2. Critical appreciation.
CONCLUSION
LIST OF USED LITERATURE
2

INTRODUCTION
Relevance of the course work Dombey and Son (1848) is a lesser-known
work by Charles Dickens. The novel tells the tale of a dysfunctional family led by
a heartless businessman. The businessman hopes his son, Paul, will take over his
business empire. He ignores his daughter, Florence. The work was a serial novel
published each month from October 1846 until April 1848.Paul Dombey is the
owner of Dombey and Son, a shipping company. The wealthy business owner
dreams of having a son to take over the family business one day. He neglects his
first child, a girl,because she is not the boy for whom he had hoped. Dombey’s first
wife dies shortly after giving birth to his namesake son. This leaves both his
newborn son and his six-year-old daughter, Florence, motherless. Mrs. Richards,
whose nickname is Toodle, serves as a wet nurse to Little Dombey.Little Paul
Dombey grows into a frail child who is often sick. He loves his older sister,
Florence. For his health, his father sends him to the seaside city of Brighton, which
does him good. Little Dombey receives an intense education in Brighton at Dr. and
Mrs. Blimber’s school. At school, he becomes friends with his schoolmate Mr.
Toots. Alas, Little Dombey’s health gets worse, and he dies at the mere age of six
years old.The death of his son causes Mr. Dombey to distance himself even further
from Florence. In addition, Florence’s friend, Walter Gay,is sent to work in
Barbados at a counting house of her father’s firm. On Walter’s way to Barbados,
his ship is reported lost at sea. With one of her few friends presumed drowned,
poor Florence is even lonelier than before.
The wealthy widower Mr. Dombey is now an attractive potential husband. He
is introduced to several potential brides and marries Mrs. Edith Granger. Edith is
the widowed daughter of Mrs. Skewton. Mr. Dombey marries Edith because she
has the correct family connections and accomplishments. Mr. Dombey does not
love Edith. The proud Edith married because her family is facing financial
difficulties. The marriage is not a happy one. The only reason Edith stays is
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because she has become fond of Florence. After an argument, Edith leaves the
marriage by running away to Dijon with Mr. Carker. She hopes to ruin her
husband’s reputation.The furious Mr. Dombey takes out his anger on Florence. He
hits Florence, who then runs away from home. She goes to stay with a friend of
Walter Gay, the retired Captain Edward Cuttle at the Wooden Midshipman. While
the hook-handed man nurses Florence back to health, Mr. Toots is a regular visitor.
Mr. Toots has loved Florence since they spent time together in
Brighton.Meanwhile, Mr. Dombey goes in search of his wife, Edith, aided by
Alice Brown, a vengeful former lover of Mr. Carker. In Dijon, Mrs. Dombey flees
Mr. Carker, who was solely her means of escape. Mr. Carker has now lost love and
employment. As Mr. Carker returns to England from Dijon, he dies after
accidentally falling under a train.Florence is delighted when her friend Walter Gay
turns up alive at the Midshipman. He survived the shipwreck and was saved while
floating at sea by a passing ship. Florence and Walter Gay marry. Walter’s uncle
Solomon Gills, who had gone in search of Walter, also returns to England.Walter
writes a letter to Mr. Dombey alerting him of his marriage to Florence. He also
makes a request to let bygones be bygones. Walter leaves the letter with Solomon
Gills.Dombey and Son goes bankrupt due to the criminal activities of Mr. Carker, a
manager at the firm. Mr. Dombey sells everything in his home and dismisses all
his servants. He lives in two rooms of the home by himself with a new
housekeeper, Mrs. Richards. Now alone, Mr. Dombey is overcome with regret and
love for his daughter. He misses Florence and thinks of her often.Florence has a
baby boy named Paul. She reunites with her father and introduces him to his
grandson.Florence takes her father to live with her at Walter’s house. As Mr.
Dombey’s health gets worse, his daughter cares for him.The novel ends on a happy
note. Florence and Walter have two children. Walter Gay is a successful
businessman. After years of neglecting his family, Mr. Dombey now understands
that family is what matters. The formerly emotionally depraved man has been
redeemed. The elder Mr. Dombey is a now an old man and doting grandparent to
4

grandson Paul and granddaughter Florence. He is moved to tears each time he
kisses his young granddaughter.
Charles Dickens, who lived from February 7, 1812, until June 9, 1870, is a
British author of many classics. During his career, he wrote many beloved novels,
including A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Great
Expectations, David Copperfield, and Nicholas Nickleby. His experience growing
up in poverty as the second of eight children influenced his work. Many of his
works deal with hunger, debt, and child labor. He is buried in Poet’s Corner of
Westminster Abbey in London.
The object of the course work is the system of parallel study and
organization of the content of the novel "Dombey and son" Organization of a
system of groups .
Subject of course work- a complete study and disclosure of the essence of the
content,forms and methods of studying the literature of Charles Dickens.
Study tasks of the course work :
- Study and analysis of pedagogical and methodological literature on the
topic;
- Analysis of pedagogical and methodological literature on the topic;
- To find new facets of the current "Dombey and son" radabiy heritage.
Structure of the course work: this course work consists of an
introduction,two chapters and four sections that are part of it, a conclusion and a
list of used literature.
5

I. CHAPTER. CHARLES DICKENS.
1.1. Biography of Charles Dickens .

Charles John Huffam Dickens
(7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870)
Charles John Huffam Dickens (/ d k nz/; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) wasˈ ɪ ɪ
an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known
fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the
Victorian era.His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and,
by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius.
His novels and short stories are widely read today.Born in Portsmouth, Dickens
left school at the age of 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father was
incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years he returned to school, before he
6

began his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20
years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction
articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter
writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, for education, and for
other social reforms.
Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The
Pickwick Papers, a publishing phenomenon—thanks largely to the introduction of
the character Sam Weller in the fourth episode—that sparked Pickwick
merchandise and spin-offs. Within a few years Dickens had become an
international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen observation
of character and society. His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly
installments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the
dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.The instalment format allowed
Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and
character development based on such feedback.For example, when his wife's
chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield
seemed to reflect her own disabilities, Dickens improved the character with
positive features.His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements
from topical events into his narratives.Masses of the illiterate poor would
individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them,
opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.His 1843 novella A Christmas
Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every
artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted and,
like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel
A Tale of Two Cities (set in London and Paris) is his best-known work of
historical fiction. The most famous celebrity of his era, he undertook, in response
to public demand, a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career.The
term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and
7

his writings, such as poor social or working conditions, or comically repulsive
characters.
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 at 1 Mile End Terrace (now
393 Commercial Road), Landport in Portsea Island (Portsmouth), Hampshire, the
second of eight children of Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow; 1789–1863) and John
Dickens (1785–1851). His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was
temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam,rigger to His
Majesty's Navy, gentleman, and head of an established firm, to act as godfather to
Charles. Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a
shipping company in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son (1848).
Charles Dickens's birthplace, 393 Commercial Road, Portsmouth
Ordnance Terrace, Chatham, Dickens's home 1817 – May 1821
In January 1815, John Dickens was called back to London and the family
moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia.[When Charles was four, they relocated to
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Sheerness and thence to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until
the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself
a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy".Charles spent time
outdoors, but also read voraciously, including the picaresque novels of Tobias
Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas. He read
and reread The Arabian Nights and the Collected Farces of Elizabeth Inchbald.At
age 7 he first saw Joseph Grimaldi—the father of modern clowning—perform at
the Star Theatre, Rochester.He later imitated Grimaldi's clowning on several
occasions, and would also edit the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi.He retained
poignant memories of childhood, helped by an excellent memory of people and
events, which he used in his writing.His father's brief work as a clerk in the Navy
Pay Office afforded him a few years of private education, first at a dame school
and then at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter, in Chatham.
Illustration by Fred Bernard of Dickens at work in a shoe-blacking factory
after his father had been sent to the Marshalsea, published in the 1892 edition of
Forster's Life of Charles Dickens.
This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to
Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House and the family (except for
Charles, who stayed behind to finish his final term at school) moved to Camden
Town in London.The family had left Kent amidst rapidly mounting debts and,
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living beyond his means,John Dickens was forced by his creditors into the
Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark, London in 1824. His wife and youngest
children joined him there, as was the practice at the time. Charles, then 12 years
old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place,
Camden Town.Mrs Roylance was "a reduced impoverished old lady, long known
to our family", whom Dickens later immortalised, "with a few alterations and
embellishments", as "Mrs Pipchin" in Dombey and Son. Later, he lived in a back-
attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, "a fat,
good-natured, kind old gentleman ... with a quiet old wife" and lame son, in Lant
Street in Southwark.They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in The Old
Curiosity Shop.
On Sundays – with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Royal
Academy of Music – he spent the day at the Marshalsea.[30] Dickens later used the
prison as a setting in Little Dorrit. To pay for his board and to help his family,
Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking
Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station,
where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The
strenuous and often harsh working conditions made a lasting impression on
Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, becoming the foundation of his
interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours of
which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He later wrote that he
wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age".As he
recalled to John Forster (from Life of Charles Dickens):
The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way,
at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course
on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten
floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the
sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt
10

and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The
counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river.
There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the
pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue
paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all
round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop.
When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I
was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots. Two or
three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on similar wages. One of
them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to
show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin;
and I took the liberty of using his name, long afterwards, in Oliver Twist.
When the warehouse was moved to Chandos Street in the smart, busy district
of Covent Garden, the boys worked in a room in which the window gave onto the
street. Small audiences gathered and watched them at work – in Dickens's
biographer Simon Callow's estimation, the public display was "a new refinement
added to his misery".
The Marshalsea around 1897, after it had closed. Dickens based several of his
characters on the experience of seeing his father in the debtors' prison, most
11

notably Amy Dorrit from Little Dorrit.A few months after his imprisonment, John
Dickens's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him £450. On the
expectation of this legacy, Dickens was released from prison. Under the Insolvent
Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors and he and his family
left the Marshalsea,for the home of Mrs Roylance.Charles's mother, Elizabeth
Dickens, did not immediately support his removal from the boot-blacking
warehouse. This influenced Dickens's view that a father should rule the family and
a mother find her proper sphere inside the home: "I never afterwards forgot, I
never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent
back." His mother's failure to request his return was a factor in his dissatisfied
attitude towards women.Righteous indignation stemming from his own situation
and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes
of his works, and it was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his
favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, David Copperfield:"I had no advice,
no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any
kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!".Dickens was
eventually sent to the Wellington House Academy in Camden Town, where he
remained until March 1827, having spent about two years there. He did not
consider it to be a good school: "Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor
discipline punctuated by the headmaster's sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and
general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr Creakle's Establishment in
David Copperfield."
Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of
Holborn Court, Gray's Inn, as a junior clerk from May 1827 to November 1828. He
was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers and
clerks. He went to theatres obsessively: he claimed that for at least three years he
went to the theatre every day. His favourite actor was Charles Mathews and
Dickens learnt his "monopolylogues" (farces in which Mathews played every
character) by heart.Then, having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare
12

time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton,
was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons and Dickens was able to share his
box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years.This education was
to inform works such as Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son and especially Bleak
House, whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal
system did much to enlighten the general public and served as a vehicle for
dissemination of Dickens's own views regarding, particularly, the heavy burden on
the poor who were forced by circumstances to "go to law".In 1830, Dickens met
his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model for the character
Dora in David Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and ended
the relationship by sending her to school in Paris.
1.2. Career
Journalism and early novels:
Catherine Hogarth Dickens by Samuel Lawrence (1838). She met the author
in 1834, and they became engaged the following year before marrying in April
1836.
In 1832, at the age of 20, Dickens was energetic and increasingly self-
confident.He enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, lacked a clear, specific
sense of what he wanted to become, and yet knew he wanted fame. Drawn to the
13

theatre – he became an early member of the Garrick Club– he landed an acting
audition at Covent Garden, where the manager George Bartley and the actor
Charles Kemble were to see him. Dickens prepared meticulously and decided to
imitate the comedian Charles Mathews, but ultimately he missed the audition
because of a cold. Before another opportunity arose, he had set out on his career as
a writer.In 1833, Dickens submitted his first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk", to
the London periodical Monthly Magazine.William Barrow, Dickens's uncle on his
mother's side, offered him a job on The Mirror of Parliament and he worked in the
House of Commons for the first time early in 1832. He rented rooms at Furnival's
Inn and worked as a political journalist, reporting on Parliamentary debates, and he
travelled across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle.
His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of
pieces, published in 1836: Sketches by Boz – Boz being a family nickname he
employed as a pseudonym for some years.Dickens apparently adopted it from the
nickname 'Moses', which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Dickens,
after a character in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. When pronounced
by anyone with a head cold,"Moses" became "Boses" – later shortened to
Boz.Dickens's own name was considered "queer" by a contemporary critic, who
wrote in 1849: "Mr Dickens, as if in revenge for his own queer name, does bestow
still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations." Dickens contributed to and edited
journals throughout his literary career.In January 1835, the Morning Chronicle
launched an evening edition, under the editorship of the Chronicle's music critic,
George Hogarth. Hogarth invited him to contribute Street Sketches and Dickens
became a regular visitor to his Fulham house – excited by Hogarth's friendship
with Walter Scott (whom Dickens greatly admired) and enjoying the company of
Hogarth's three daughters: Georgina, Mary and 19-year-old Catherine.
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The wise-cracking, warm-hearted servant Sam Weller from The Pickwick
Papers—a publishing phenomenon that sparked numerous spin-offs and Pickwick
merchandise—made the 24-year-old Dickens famous.
Dickens made rapid progress both professionally and socially. He began a
friendship with William Harrison Ainsworth, the author of the highwayman novel
Rookwood (1834), whose bachelor salon in Harrow Road had become the meeting
place for a set that included Daniel Maclise, Benjamin Disraeli, Edward Bulwer-
Lytton and George Cruikshank. All these became his friends and collaborators,
with the exception of Disraeli, and he met his first publisher, John Macrone, at the
house.The success of Sketches by Boz led to a proposal from publishers Chapman
and Hall for Dickens to supply text to match Robert Seymour's engraved
illustrations in a monthly letterpress. Seymour committed suicide after the second
instalment and Dickens, who wanted to write a connected series of sketches, hired
"Phiz" to provide the engravings (which were reduced from four to two per
instalment) for the story. The resulting story became The Pickwick Papers and,
although the first few episodes were not successful, the introduction of the
Cockney character Sam Weller in the fourth episode (the first to be illustrated by
Phiz) marked a sharp climb in its popularity.The final instalment sold 40,000
copies.On the impact of the character, The Paris Review stated, "arguably the most
historic bump in English publishing is the Sam Weller Bump."A publishing
phenomenon, John Sutherland called The Pickwick Papers "the most important
15

single novel of the Victorian era".The unprecedented success led to numerous spin-
offs and merchandise ranging from Pickwick cigars, playing cards, china figurines,
Sam Weller puzzles, Weller boot polish and joke books.
The Sam Weller Bump testifies not merely to Dickens's comic genius but to
his acumen as an "authorpreneur", a portmanteau he inhabited long before The
Economist took it up. For a writer who made his reputation crusading against the
squalor of the Industrial Revolution, Dickens was a creature of capitalism; he used
everything from the powerful new printing presses to the enhanced advertising
revenues to the expansion of railroads to sell more books. Dickens ensured that his
books were available in cheap bindings for the lower orders as well as in morocco-
and-gilt for people of quality; his ideal readership included everyone from the
pickpockets who read Oliver Twist to Queen Victoria, who found it "exceedingly
interesting".
— How The Pickwick Papers Launched Charles Dickens's Career, The Paris
Review.
On the creation of modern mass culture, Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic
writes, "Literature" is not a big enough category for Pickwick. It defined its own, a
new one that we have learned to call "entertainment."In November 1836, Dickens
accepted the position of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a position he held for three
years, until he fell out with the owner.In 1836, as he finished the last instalments of
The Pickwick Papers, he began writing the beginning instalments of Oliver Twist –
writing as many as 90 pages a month – while continuing work on Bentley's and
also writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. Oliver Twist,
published in 1838, became one of Dickens's better known
stories and was the first Victorian novel with a child
protagonist.
Young Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise, 1839
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On 2 April 1836, after a one-year engagement, and between episodes two and
three of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens married Catherine Thomson Hogarth
(1815–1879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening
Chronicle.They were married in St Luke's Church,Chelsea, London. After a brief
honeymoon in Chalk in Kent, the couple returned to lodgings at Furnival's Inn.The
first of their ten children, Charles, was born in January 1837 and a few months
later the family set up home in Bloomsbury at 48 Doughty Street, London (on
which Charles had a three-year lease at £80 a year) from 25 March 1837 until
December 1839.Dickens's younger brother Frederick and Catherine's 17-year-old
sister Mary Hogarth moved in with them. Dickens became very attached to Mary,
and she died in his arms after a brief illness in 1837. Unusually for Dickens, as a
consequence of his shock, he stopped working, and he and Catherine stayed at a
little farm on Hampstead Heath for a fortnight. Dickens idealised Mary; the
character he fashioned after her, Rose Maylie, he found he could not now kill, as
he had planned, in his fiction and according to Ackroyd, he drew on memories of
her for his later descriptions of Little Nell and Florence Dombey.His grief was so
great that he was unable to meet the deadline for the June instalment of The
Pickwick Papers and had to cancel the Oliver Twist instalment that month as
well.The time in Hampstead was the occasion for a growing bond between Dickens
and John Forster to develop; Forster soon became his unofficial business manager
and the first to read his work.
Barnaby Rudge was Dickens's first popular failure
but the character of Dolly Varden, "pretty, witty, sexy,
became central to numerous theatrical adaptations"
His success as a novelist continued. The young
Queen Victoria read both Oliver Twist and The Pickwick
Papers, staying up until midnight to discuss them.Nicholas
Nickleby (1838–39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41)
17

and, finally, his first historical novel, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of
'Eighty, as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840–41), were all
published in monthly instalments before being made into books.In the midst of all
his activity during this period, there was discontent with his publishers and John
Macrone was bought off, while Richard Bentley signed over all his rights in Oliver
Twist. Other signs of a certain restlessness and discontent emerged; in Broadstairs
he flirted with Eleanor Picken, the young fiancée of his solicitor's best friend and
one night grabbed her and ran with her down to the sea. He declared they were
both to drown there in the "sad sea waves". She finally got free, and afterwards
kept her distance. In June 1841, he precipitously set out on a two-month tour of
Scotland and then, in September 1841, telegraphed Forster that he had decided to
go to America.Master Humphrey's Clock was shut down, though Dickens was still
keen on the idea of the weekly magazine, a form he liked, an appreciation that had
begun with his childhood reading of the 18th-century magazines Tatler and The
Spectator.Dickens was perturbed by the return to power of the Tories, whom he
described as "people whom, politically, I despise and abhor." He had been tempted
to stand for the Liberals in Reading, but decided against it due to financial
straits.He wrote three anti-Tory verse satires("The Fine Old English
Gentleman","The Quack Doctor's Proclamation", and "Subjects for Painters")
which were published in The Examiner.
Dickens's approach to the novel is influenced by various things, including the
picaresque novel tradition,melodrama and the novel of sensibility.According to
Ackroyd, other than these, perhaps the most important literary influence on him
was derived from the fables of The Arabian Nights.Satire and irony are central to
the picaresque novel.Comedy is also an aspect of the British picaresque novel
tradition of Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett. Fielding's Tom
Jones was a major influence on the 19th-century novelist including Dickens, who
read it in his youth and named a son Henry Fielding Dickens after him.Influenced
by Gothic fiction—a literary genre that began with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by
18

Horace Walpole—Dickens incorporated Gothic imagery, settings and plot devices
in his works.Victorian gothic moved from castles and abbeys into contemporary
urban environments: in particular London, such as Dickens's Oliver Twist and
Bleak House. The jilted bride Miss Havisham from Great Expectations is one of
Dickens' best-known gothic creations; living in a ruined mansion, her bridal gown
effectively doubles as her funeral shroud.
No other writer had such a profound influence on Dickens as William
Shakespeare. On Dickens's veneration of Shakespeare, Alfred Harbage wrote "No
one is better qualified to recognise literary genius than a literary genius"— A Kind
of Power: The Shakespeare-Dickens Analogy (1975).Regarding Shakespeare as
"the great master" whose plays "were an unspeakable source of delight", Dickens's
lifelong affinity with the playwright included seeing theatrical productions of his
plays in London and putting on amateur dramatics with friends in his early years.In
1838 Dickens travelled to Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the house in which
Shakespeare was born, leaving his autograph in the visitors' book. Dickens would
draw on this experience in his next work, Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39),
expressing the strength of feeling experienced by visitors to Shakespeare's
birthplace: the character Mrs Wititterly states, "I don't know how it is, but after
you've seen the place and written your name in the little book, somehow or other
you seem to be inspired; it kindles up quite a fire within one."
Dickens's Dream by Robert William Buss,
portraying Dickens at his desk at Gads Hill Place
surrounded by many of his characters
Dickens's writing style is marked by a profuse
linguistic creativity.Satire, flourishing in his gift for
caricature, is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to Hogarth for his keen
practical sense of the ludicrous side of life, though his acclaimed mastery of
varieties of class idiom may in fact mirror the conventions of contemporary
19

popular theatre/Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his
characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers and assist the
development of motifs in the storyline, giving what one critic calls an "allegorical
impetus" to the novels' meanings.To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr
Murdstone in David Copperfield conjures up twin allusions to murder and stony
coldness.His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism. His satires of
British aristocratic snobbery – he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator" – are
often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats or
dinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of
fancy.The author worked closely with his illustrators, supplying them with a
summary of the work at the outset and thus ensuring that his characters and
settings were exactly how he envisioned them. He briefed the illustrator on plans
for each month's instalment so that work could begin before he wrote them.
Marcus Stone, illustrator of Our Mutual Friend, recalled that the author was always
"ready to describe down to the minutest details the personal characteristics, and ...
life-history of the creations of his fancy".Dickens employs Cockney English in
many of his works, denoting working-class Londoners. Cockney grammar appears
in terms such as ain't, and consonants in words are frequently omitted, as in 'ere
(here) and wot (what).An example of this usage is in Oliver Twist. The Artful
Dodger uses cockney slang which is juxtaposed with Oliver's 'proper' English,
when the Dodger repeats Oliver saying "seven" with "sivin".
Dickens published well over a dozen major novels and novellas, a large
number of short stories, including a number of Christmas-themed stories, a handful
of plays, and several non-fiction books. Dickens's novels were initially serialised in
weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.
 The Pickwick Papers (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club;
monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837)
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 Oliver Twist (The Adventures of Oliver Twist; monthly serial in
Bentley's Miscellany, February 1837 to April 1839)
 Nicholas Nickleby (The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby;
monthly serial, April 1838 to October 1839)
 The Old Curiosity Shop (weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock,
April 1840 to November 1841)
 Barnaby Rudge (Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty; weekly
serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, February to November 1841)
 A Christmas Carol (A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost-story of
Christmas; 1843)
 Martin Chuzzlewit (The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit;
monthly serial, January 1843 to July 1844)
 The Chimes (The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an
Old Year Out and a New Year In; 1844)
 The Cricket on the Hearth (The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of
Home; 1845)
 The Battle of Life (The Battle of Life: A Love Story; 1846)
 Dombey and Son (Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son:
Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation; monthly serial, October 1846 to
April 1848)
 The Haunted Man (The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain: A
Fancy for Christmas-time; 1848)
 David Copperfield (The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and
Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone
Rookery monthly serial, May 1849 to November 1850)
 Bleak House (monthly serial, March 1852 to September 1853)
 Hard Times (Hard Times: For These Times; weekly serial in Household
Words, 1 April 1854, to 12 August 1854)
 Little Dorrit (monthly serial, December 1855 to June 1857)
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 A Tale of Two Cities (weekly serial in All the Year Round, 30 April
1859, to 26 November 1859)
 Great Expectations (weekly serial in All the Year Round, 1 December
1860 to 3 August 1861)
 Our Mutual Friend (monthly serial, May 1864 to November 1865)
 The Signal-Man (1866), first published as part of the Mugby Junction
collection in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round.
 The Mystery of Edwin Drood (monthly serial, April 1870 to September
1870), left unfinished due to Dickens's death
II.CHAPTER. THE IDEA OF THE NOVEL “DOMBEY AND SON”
2.1. Information about Dombey and son.
Dombey and Son is a novel by English author Charles Dickens. It follows the
fortunes of a shipping firm owner, who is frustrated at the lack of a son to follow
him in his footsteps; he initially rejects his daughter's love before eventually
becoming reconciled with her before his death.The story features many Dickensian
themes, such as arranged marriages, child cruelty, betrayal, deceit, and relations
between people from different British social classes. The novel was first published
in monthly parts between 1846 and 1848, with illustrations by Hablot Knight
Browne ("Phiz").
22

Cover of serial edition, fifth instalment, February 1847
Development:Dickens started writing the book in Lausanne, Switzerland,
before returning to England, via Paris, to complete it.The full title is Dealings with
the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation.
Plot summary:
The story concerns Paul Dombey, the wealthy owner of the shipping company
of the book's title, whose dream is to have a son to continue his business. The book
begins when his son is born and Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth.
Following the advice of Mrs Louisa Chick, his sister, Dombey employs a wet
nurse named Mrs Richards (Toodle). Dombey already has a six-year-old daughter
Florence, but, bitter at her not having been the desired boy, he neglects her
continually. One day, Mrs Richards, Florence, and her maid, Susan Nipper,
secretly pay a visit to Mrs Richards' house in Staggs's Gardens so that Mrs
Richards can see her children. During this trip,Florence becomes separated from
them and is kidnapped for a short time by Good Mrs Brown, before being returned
23

to the streets. She makes her way to Dombey and Son's offices in the City and
there is found and brought home by Walter Gay, an employee of Mr Dombey, who
first introduces her to his uncle, the navigation instrument maker Solomon Gills, at
his shop The Wooden Midshipman.The child, named Paul after his father, is a
weak and sickly child, who does not socialise normally with others; adults call him
"old fashioned". He is intensely fond of his sister Florence, who is deliberately
neglected by her father as a supposedly irrelevant distraction. Paul is sent to the
seaside at Brighton for his health, where he and Florence lodge with the ancient
and acidic Mrs Pipchin. Finding his health beginning to improve there, Mr
Dombey keeps him at Brighton and has him educated there at Dr and Mrs
Blimber's school, where he and the other boys undergo both an intense and arduous
education under the tutelage of Mr Feeder, B.A. and Cornelia Blimber. It is here
that Paul is befriended by a fellow pupil, the amiable but weak-minded Mr
Toots.Here, Paul's health declines even further in this "great hothouse" and he
finally dies, still only six years old. Dombey pushes his daughter away from him
after the death of his son, while she futilely tries to earn his love. In the meantime,
young Walter is sent off to fill a junior position in the firm's counting house in
Barbados through the manipulations of Mr Dombey's confidential manager, Mr
James Carker, "with his white teeth", who sees him as a potential rival through his
association with Florence. His boat is reported lost and he is presumed drowned.
Walter's uncle leaves to go in search of Walter, leaving his great friend Captain
Edward Cuttle in charge of The Midshipman. Meanwhile, Florence is now left
alone with few friends to keep her company.
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Illustration of Mr Carker and Edith Dombey by Charles Green
Illustration of Captain Cuttle and Florence Dombey by Charles Green
Dombey goes to Leamington Spa with a new friend, Major Joseph B.
Bagstock. The Major deliberately sets out to befriend Dombey to spite his
neighbour in Princess's Place, Miss Tox, who has turned cold towards him owing
to her hopes – through her close friendship with Mrs Chick – of marrying Mr
Dombey. At the spa, Dombey is introduced via the Major to Mrs Skewton and her
widowed daughter, Mrs Edith Granger. Mr Dombey, on the lookout for a new wife
since his son's death, considers Edith a suitable match due to her accomplishments
and family connections; he is encouraged by both the Major and her avaricious
mother, but obviously feels no affection for her. After they return to London,
Dombey remarries, effectively "buying" the beautiful but haughty Edith as she and
her mother are in a poor financial state. The marriage is loveless; his wife despises
Dombey for his overbearing pride and herself for being shallow and worthless. Her
love for Florence initially prevents her from leaving, but finally she conspires with
Mr Carker to ruin Dombey's public image by running away together to Dijon. They
do so after her final argument with Dombey in which he once again attempts to
subdue her to his will. When he discovers that she has left him, he blames Florence
for siding with her stepmother, striking her on the breast in his anger. Florence is
forced to run away from home. Highly distraught, she finally makes her way to
The Midshipman where she lodges with Captain Cuttle as he attempts to restore
her to health. They are visited frequently by Mr Toots and his prizefighter
25

companion, the Chicken, since Mr Toots has been desperately in love with
Florence since their time together in Brighton.
Dombey sets out to find his wife. He is helped by Mrs Brown and her
daughter, Alice, who, as it turns out, was a former lover of Mr Carker. After being
transported as a convict for criminal activities, which Mr Carker had involved her
in, she is seeking her revenge against him now that she has returned to England.
Going to Mrs Brown's house, Dombey overhears the conversation between Rob the
Grinder – who is in the employment of Mr Carker – and the old woman as to the
couple's whereabouts and sets off in pursuit. In the meantime, in Dijon, Mrs
Dombey informs Carker that she sees him in no better a light than she sees
Dombey, that she will not stay with him, and she flees their apartment. Distraught,
with both his financial and personal hopes lost, Carker flees from his former
employer's pursuit. He seeks refuge back in England, but being greatly
overwrought, accidentally falls under a train and is killed.
Captain Cuttle by "Kyd" (Joseph Clayton Clarke)
26

Toots by "Kyd" (Joseph Clayton Clarke)
After Carker's death, it is discovered that he had been running the firm far
beyond its means. This information is gleaned by Carker's brother and sister, John
and Harriet, from Mr Morfin, the assistant manager at Dombey and Son, who sets
out to help John Carker. He often overheard the conversations between the two
brothers in which James, the younger, often abused John, the older, who was just a
lowly clerk and who is sacked by Dombey because of his filial relationship to the
former manager. As his nearest relations, John and Harriet inherit all Carker's ill-
gotten gains, to which they feel they have no right. Consequently, they
surreptitiously give the proceeds to Mr Dombey, through Mr Morphin, who is
instructed to let Dombey believe that they are merely something forgotten from the
general wreck of his fortunes. Meanwhile, back at The Midshipman, Walter
reappears, having been saved by a passing ship after floating adrift with two other
sailors on some wreckage. After some time, he and Florence are finally reunited –
not as "brother" and "sister" but as lovers, and they marry prior to sailing for China
on Walter's new ship. This is also the time when Sol Gills returns to The
Midshipman. As he relates to his friends, he received news whilst in Barbados that
a homeward-bound China trader had picked up Walter and so had returned to
England immediately. He said he had sent letters whilst in the Caribbean to his
friend Ned Cuttle c/o Mrs MacStinger at Cuttle's former lodgings, and the bemused
Captain recounts how he fled the place, thus never receiving them.Florence and
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Walter depart and Sol Gills is entrusted with a letter, written by Walter to her
father, pleading for him to be reconciled towards them both. A year passes and
Alice Brown has slowly been dying despite the tender care of Harriet Carker. One
night Alice's mother reveals that Alice herself is the illegitimate cousin of Edith
Dombey (which accounts for their similarity in appearance when they both meet).
In a chapter entitled "Retribution", Dombey and Son goes bankrupt. Dombey
retires to two rooms in his house and all its contents are put up for sale. Mrs
Pipchin, for some time the housekeeper, dismisses all the servants and she herself
returns to Brighton, to be replaced by Mrs Richards. Dombey spends his days sunk
in gloom, seeing no-one and thinking only of his daughter:
He thought of her as she had been that night when he and his bride came
home. He thought of her as she had been in all the home events of the abandoned
house. He thought, now, that of all around him, she alone had never changed. His
boy had faded into dust, his proud wife had sunk into a polluted creature, his
flatterer and friend had been transformed into the worst of villains, his riches had
melted away, the very walls that sheltered him looked on him as a stranger; she
alone had turned the same, mild gentle look upon him always. Yes, to the latest
and the last. She had never changed to him – nor had he ever changed to her – and
she was lost. However, one day Florence returns to the house with her baby son,
Paul, and is lovingly reunited with her father.
Dombey accompanies his daughter to her and Walter's house where he slowly
starts to decline, cared for by Florence and also Susan Nipper, now Mrs Toots.
They receive a visit from Edith's Cousin Feenix who takes Florence to Edith for
one final time – Feenix sought Edith out in France and she returned to England
under his protection. Edith gives Florence a letter, asking Dombey to forgive her
her crime before her departure to the South of Italy with her elderly relative. As
she says to Florence, "I will try, then to forgive him his share of the blame. Let him
try to forgive me mine!"The final chapter (LXII) sees Dombey now a white-haired
28

old man "whose face bears heavy marks of care and suffering; but they are traces
of a storm that has passed on for ever, and left a clear evening in its track". Sol
Gills and Ned Cuttle are now partners at The Midshipman, a source of great pride
to the latter, and Mr and Mrs Toots announce the birth of their third daughter.
Walter is doing well in business, having been appointed to a position of great
confidence and trust, and Dombey is the proud grandfather of both a grandson and
granddaughter whom he dotes on. The book ends with the moving lines:
"Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you kiss me?"
He only answers, "Little Florence! Little Florence!" and smooths away the
curls that shade her earnest eyes.
2.2.Critical appreciation.
Dombey and Son was conceived first and foremost as a continuous novel. A
letter from Dickens to Forster on 26 July 1846 shows the major details of the plot
and theme already substantially worked out. According to the novelist George
Gissing,Dombey was begun at Lausanne, continued at Paris, completed in London,
and at English seaside places; whilst the early parts were being written, a
Christmas story, The Battle of Life, was also in hand, and Dickens found it
troublesome to manage both together. That he overcame the difficulty—that, soon
after, we find him travelling about England as member of an amateur dramatic
company—that he undertook all sorts of public engagements and often devoted
himself to private festivity—Dombey going on the while, from month to month—
is matter enough for astonishment to those who know anything about artistic
production. But such marvels become commonplaces in the life of Charles
Dickens.There is some evidence to suggest that Dombey and Son was inspired by
the life of Christopher Huffam,Rigger to His Majesty's Navy, a gentleman and
29

head of an established firm, Huffam & Son. Charles Dickens's father, John
Dickens, at the time a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, asked the wealthy, well-
connected Huffam to act as godfather to Charles.This same Huffam family
appeared later in Charles Palliser's 1989 The Quincunx, a homage to the
Dickensian novel form.As with most of Dickens's work, a number of socially
significant themes are to be found in this book. In particular the book deals with
the then-prevalent common practice of arranged marriages for financial gain. Other
themes to be detected within this work include child cruelty (particularly in
Dombey's treatment of Florence), familial relationships, and as ever in Dickens,
betrayal and deceit and the consequences thereof. Another strong central theme,
which the critic George Gissing elaborates on in detail in his 1925 work The
Immortal Dickens,is that of pride and arrogance, of which Paul Dombey senior is
the extreme exemplification in Dickens's work.
Gissing makes a number of points about certain key inadequacies in the
novel, not the least that Dickens's central character is largely unsympathetic and an
unsuitable vehicle and also that after the death of the young Paul Dombey the
reader is somewhat estranged from the rest of what is to follow. He notes that "the
moral theme of this book was Pride—pride of wealth, pride of place, personal
arrogance. Dickens started with a clear conception of his central character and of
the course of the story in so far as it depended upon that personage; he planned the
action, the play of motive, with unusual definiteness, and adhered very closely in
the working to this well-laid scheme". However, he goes on to write that "Dombey
and Son is a novel which in its beginning promises more than its progress fulfils"
and gives the following reasons why:
Impossible to avoid the reflection that the death of Dombey's son and heir
marks the end of a complete story, that we feel a gap between Chapter XVI and
what comes after (the author speaks of feeling it himself, of his striving to "transfer
the interest to Florence") and that the narrative of the later part is ill-constructed,
30

often wearisome, sometimes incredible. We miss Paul, we miss Walter Gay
(shadowy young hero though he be); Florence is too colourless for deep interest,
and the second Mrs Dombey is rather forced upon us than accepted as a natural
figure in the drama. Dickens's familiar shortcomings are abundantly exemplified.
He is wholly incapable of devising a plausible intrigue, and shocks the reader with
monstrous improbabilities such as all that portion of the denouement in which old
Mrs Brown and her daughter are concerned. A favourite device with him (often
employed with picturesque effect) was to bring into contact persons representing
widely severed social ranks; in this book the "effect" depends too often on
"incidences of the boldest artificiality," as nearly always we end by neglecting the
story as a story, and surrendering ourselves to the charm of certain parts, the
fascination of certain characters.
Characters in the novel:
Karl Ashley Smith, in his introduction to Wordsworth Classics' edition of
Dombey and Son, makes some reflections on the novel's characters. He believes
that Dombey's power to disturb comes from his belief that human relationships can
be controlled by money, giving the following examples to support this viewpoint:
He tries to prevent Mrs Richards from developing an attachment to Paul by
emphasising the wages he pays her. Mrs Pipchin's small talk satisfies him as "the
sort of thing for which he paid her so much a quarter" (p.132). Worst of all, he
effectively buys his second wife and expects that his wealth and position in society
will be enough to keep her in awed obedience to him. Paul's questions about
money are only the first indication of the naivety of his outlook.
However, he also believes that the satire against this man is tempered with
compassion.
31

Smith also draws attention to the fact that certain characters in the novel
"develop a pattern from Dickens's earlier novels, whilst pointing the way to future
works". One such character is Little Paul who is a direct descendant of Little Nell.
Another is James Carker, the ever-smiling manager of Dombey and Son. Smith
notes there are strong similarities between him and the likes of Jaggers in Great
Expectations and, even more so, the evil barrister, Mr Tulkinghorn, in Bleak
House:
From Fagin (Oliver Twist) onwards, the terrifying figure exerting power over
others by an infallible knowledge of their secrets becomes one of the author's
trademarks ... James Carker's gentlemanly businesslike respectability marks him
out as the ancestor of Tulkinghorn in Bleak House and even of Jaggers in Great
Expectations. And his involvements in the secrets of others leads him to as sticky
an end as Tulkinghorn's. The fifty-fifth chapter, where he is forced to flee his
outraged employer, magnificently continues the theme of the guilt-hunted man
from Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist and Jonas's restless sense of pursuit in Martin
Chuzzlewit. There is always a strong sense in Dickens of the narrative drive of
discovery catching up with those who deal in darkness.
Gissing looks at some of the minor characters in the novel and is particularly
struck by that of Edward (Ned) Cuttle.
Captain Cuttle has a larger humanity than his roaring friend [Captain
Bunsby], he is the creation of humour. That the Captain suffered dire things at the
hands of Mrs MacStinger is as credible as it is amusing, but he stood in no danger
of Bunsby's fate; at times he can play his part in a situation purely farcical, but the
man himself moves on a higher level. He is one of the most familiar to us among
Dickens's characters, an instance of the novelist's supreme power, which (I like to
repeat) proves itself in the bodying forth of a human personality henceforth
accepted by the world. His sentences have become proverbs; the mention of his
name brings before the mind's eye an image of flesh and blood – rude, tending to
32

the grotesque, but altogether lovable. Captain Cuttle belongs to the world of Uncle
Toby, with, to be sure, a subordinate position. Analyse him as you will, make the
most of those extravagances which pedants of to-day cannot away with, and in the
end you will still be face to face with something vital – explicable only as the
product of genius.
The growth of the railways:
One theme is the destruction and degradation, of both people and places,
caused by industrialisation, illustrated in particular by the building of the new
railway through Camden Town (assumed to represent the London and Birmingham
Railway constructed between 1833 and 1837). The novel reflects to some extent
Dickens's concerns with railway travel and the "railway mania", "a fascination
which had a strong ingredient of fear in it", and reflects ambivalence towards the
effects of the railways – they generated prosperity and employment, but
undermined older ways of living and encouraged speculation.In 1865, many years
after this novel was published, Dickens was involved in a train crash. Soon after
this incident he wrote two short stories, Mugby Junction and The Signal-Man,
which projected a morbid view of the railways.
Final thoughts:
Gissing refers to Dickens's instinctive genius for reflecting the thoughts and
morals of the common man in his writing. He observes that the author was in
constant communication with Forster,as to the feeling of his readers about some
proposed incident or episode; not that he feared, in any ignoble sense, to offend his
public, but because his view of art involved compliance with ideals of ordinary
simple folk. He held that view as a matter of course. Quite recently it has been put
forth with prophetic fervour by Tolstoy, who cites Dickens among the few
novelists whose work will bear this test. An instinctive sympathy with the moral
(and therefore the artistic) prejudices of the everyday man guided Dickens
33

throughout his career, teaching him when, and how far, he might strike at things he
thought evil, yet never defeat his prime purpose of sending forth fiction acceptable
to the multitude. Himself, in all but his genius, a representative Englishman of the
middle-class, he was able to achieve this task with unfailing zeal and with entire
sincerity.
Karl Smith, in his turn, gives his specific reasons for what makes Dombey
and Son – and the works of Dickens as a whole – worth reading again and again.
He observes that this is based in part on Dickens's "recognition that solemn themes
require humour and verbal vigour to accompany and complement them" and goes
on to conclude:
Grim psychological realism, social commentary, comic absurdity and
symbolic transcendence are here brought together more than in any previous novel
with the possible exception of Oliver Twist. Dombey and Son not only prepares
the ground for Dickens's later masterpieces, but demands to be enjoyed for its own
energy and richness.
Adaptations
Theatre:
1848 – a play adaptation by John Brougham that premiered at Burton's
Theatre in July 1848 with William Evans Burton as Captain Cuttle
Television:
1969 miniseries – starring John Carson as Paul Dombey and Derek Seaton as
Walter Gay. First adaptation by the BBC.
1974 – Dombi i syn a Soviet teleplay starring Valentin Gaft as Paul Dombey
and Konstantin Raikin as Walter Gay
34

1983 miniseries – starring Julian Glover as Paul Dombey and Max Gold as
Walter Gay. Second and final adaptation by the BBC.
2007 – Dombais et fils a French television mini-series starring Christophe
Malavoy as Charles Dombais (=Paul Dombey)
Andrew Davies attempted to pen a new adaptation of Dombey after the
success of Bleak House and Little Dorrit, but the BBC scrapped the plans, wanting
to move away from "bonnet dramas"
Film:
1917 – Dombey and Son a British Silent film starring Norman McKinnel as
Paul Dombey and Hayford Hobbs as Walter Gay
1931 – Rich Man's Folly a loose adaptation of the novel which is modernised
and set in the United States. The named Dombey was also replaced with Trumbull
Radio:
2007 – a twenty-part BBC Radio 4 adaptation written by Mike Walker, with
Alex Jennings as the voice of Charles Dickens, Robert Glenister as Dombey,
Abigail Hollick as Florence, Helen Schlesinger as Edith, Trevor Peacock as
Captain Cuttle, Adrian Luker as Carker, Geraldine James as Mrs Brown and Sam
Pamphilon as Toots.
Original publication
Dombey and Son was originally published in 19 monthly instalments; each
cost one shilling (except for the last, which cost two shillings, being a double
issue) and contained 32 pages of text with two illustrations by Phiz
35

 I – October 1846 (chapters 1–
4);
 II – November 1846 (chapters
5–7);
 III – December 1846 (chapters
8–10);
 IV – January 1847 (chapters
11–13);
 V – February 1847 (chapters
14–16);
 VI – March 1847 (chapters 17–
19);
 VII – April 1847 (chapters 20–
22);
 VIII – May 1847 (chapters 23–
25);
 IX – June 1847 (chapters 26–
28);
 X – July 1847 (chapters 29–
31);  XI – August 1847 (chapters 32–
34);
 XII – September 1847 (chapters
35–38);
 XIII – October 1847 (chapters
39–41);
 XIV – November 1847
(chapters 42–45);
 XV – December 1847 (chapters
46–48);
 XVI – January 1848 (chapters
49–51);
 XVII – February 1848
(chapters 52–54);
 XVIII – March 1848 (chapters
55–57);
 XIX-XX – April 1848 (chapters
58–62).
Dombey and Son appeared in monthly parts from 1 October 1846 to 1 April
1848 and in one volume in 1848.
CONCLUSION
36

The novel Dombey and Son marked the turning point in Dickens’ creative
world. The Russian literary critic V.G. Belinsky was greatly astonished with this
novel and wrote in his letter to another critic, P.V. Annenkov, that after reading
Dombey and Son all the previous Dickens’ novels seemed to be “faint and feeble”.
The first translations of Dickens’ works into Russian were made at the end of the
30s and beginning of the 40s of the 19th century. These translations were poor and
they diminished the real value of the works. But when in 1847 the Russian journal
“Otechestvenniye zapis-ki” began to publish the novel Dombey and Son, Belinsky
wrote to his friend, a Russian writer V.P. Botkin: “now Dickens is an absolutely
new writer to me - the writer that I did not know before. He is a miracle. I have
never seen so much imagination in drawing such deep and real portraits of literary
characters”.The Soviet scholar, T.I. Silman, who deeply studied Dickens’ creative
work, described the novel, it as the first draft of Bildungsroman genre in Dickens’
novels.5 It is acknowledged now, however, that it is neither Dickens’ first
education novel nor the draft of the genre. Bakhtin’s conception makes it possible
to classify this novel as a typical Bildungsroman, which possesses specific features
and structure of the plot and narration.Traditionally, Bildungsroman is
concentrated on character-shaping of one main protagonist, who is surrounded by a
chain of events and secondary characters. The novel Dombey and Son is unique -it
has three parallel lines of the plot development.Authors rarely describe evolution
and formation of three protagonists within one novel. It is difficult to single out the
main one in this novel, because Dickens changes the focus of the narration from
one protagonist to another, depending on the significance of each episode and the
problem that he highlights:
- the first line of the plot is little Paul’s destiny;
- the second one is Florence’s life;
- the third one is Dombey father’s life.
37

Every line has its own meaning and impact on.Social issues, morality,
problems of teaching and getting education, interpersonal relations are in the center
of the narration and shown by the author from three angles. It is clear that Dickens
deliberately constructs his heroes along these lines from his direct personal
statements. The personalities and individual circumstances of his heroes evolve
from episode to episode. Such a type of characterization, as well a desire to render
these characters into fictional form, permits Dickens to settle technical difficulties
in finding an adequate structure for his novel.
For example, we can notice confirmation of these thoughts from the first line
of the novel. The first line of the plot follows the rule of chronological narration
and covers such periods of Paul’s life as infantry and childhood. A vivid and
expressive image of a child - Paul Dombey, is presented here as the ideal hero.
Dickens shows the features of the child, rebelling against the treatment of children
as small adults. The writer poeticizes the world of childhood conveying the
immediacy and simplicity with which the little man appreciates what is happening.
The image of Paul Dombey enables the writer to let his readers look at everything
around him through the eyes of a little “sage”(the technique, which he also uses in
The Old Curiosity Shop when the world is depicted through the eyes of little Nell),
who with his “strange” and carefully targeted questions takes adults aback. The
boy permits himself to doubt even in such “immutable values” of the adult world,
as money, irrefutably proving its impotence in saving his mother. For the father,
the birth of the son very much reminds a profitable agreement - now there is a man
to continue his business. The long-awaited son is, first of all, the future partner, the
successor of business, and this circumstance defines the father’s relation to the
boy, which Dombey takes for genuine feelings. The imaginary love gets a
destructive character, as well as everything that Mr. Dombey touches.This line of
the plot development finishes with Paul’s death. The main theme of this line shows
that interference with the natural development of a child, overloading him with
38

education and depriving of leisure and cheerful games ruins the world of
childhood. Let child be a child.
LIST OF USED LITERATURE
1. Encyclopedia Britannica online. URL : http:// www.britannica.com
EBchecked /topic/ 65244/ bil-dungsroman
2. Buckley, J. H. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to
Golding. Cambridge : Harvard UP, 1974.
3. Бахтин , М . М . Эстетика словесного творчества . M ., 1979. 416 с. URL :
http://www.iu.ru/ biblio/archive/bahtin_estetika/
4. Белинский, В. Г. Оливер Твист. Роман г-на Диккенса ( Boz ) Retrieved
February 22, 2011. URL : http://az.lib.ru/b/belinskij_w_g/text_0710. shtml
5. Сильман, Т. И. Диккенс. Очерки творчества. Л.: Худож. лит., 1970. С.
210, 213.
6. Dickens, Charles (1995). Dombey and Son. Ware: Wordsworth Classics.
ISBN 1-85326-257-9.
7. "Chick, Mrs. Louisa" . New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
8. Gissing, George (1925). "Dombey and Son". The Immortal Dickens.
London: Cecil Palmer.
9. West, Gilian (Spring 1999). "Huffam and Son". Dickensian. 95 (447): 5–18.
10. Smith, Karl Ashley (1995). "Introduction". Dombey and Son. Ware:
Wordsworth Classics. ISBN 1-85326-257-9.
11. Horsman, Alan (1982). "Introduction". Dombey and Son. Oxford University
Press. ISBN 0-19-281565-2.
12. Charles Dickens. “Domby and Son”, Signet Classic Editions. The New
American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1964.
13. Bowen, John (2003). Other Dickens: Pickwick to Chuzzlewit (2 ed.). Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926140-6. Archived from the original on
19 November 2016. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
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14. Bradbury, Nicola, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (St. Martin's Press,
1990) ISBN 978-0312056582
15. Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert, "Becoming Dickens 'The Invention of a
Novelist'", London: Harvard University Press, 2011
16. Gold, David L (2009). González, Félix Rodríquez; Buades, Antonio Lillo
(eds.). Studies in Etymology and Etiology: With Emphasis on Germanic,
Jewish, Romance and Slavic Languages. Universidad de Alicante. ISBN
978-84-7908-517-9. Archived from the original on 19 November 2016.
Retrieved 18 February 2016.
17. Hart, Christopher (20 May 2007). "What, the Dickens World?". The Sunday
Times. UK. Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 21 April
2012.
Used internet sites
1. http://www.ctc.msiu.ru/materials/Bookl , 2/indexl . html
2. http://www.ctc.msiu.ru/materials/CS__Book/A5_book.tgz
3. www.tsuit.uz electron library
4. www.uzmu.uz electron library.
5. http://pedagog.uz
6. www.microsoft.com; Russian;office2000;
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35. course work

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