Rereading Review: "Dombey and Son" by Charles Dickens

I've reread a few books by Dickens this year and if you'd like to read about these experiences I've had returning to them (sometimes after more than a decade), then just follow the links below!

Dombey and Son is another big and chunky Dickens novel and, as I have said to friends in the past: you need to read the chunky ones. A Christmas Carol is great yes, but it is fairly juvenile in its language - which is why it is a good read or starting point for young children to get into Dickens. But if you are a fan of his prose and his storytelling then you need novels like The Pickwick Papers and yes, even Martin Chuzzlewit in your life. Why? Once you see him get going then there's no stopping him. You really feel the atmosphere so much more, everything becomes heavier and you can see Dickens do some of his best work. Dombey and Son is another one of those novels.

I first read Dombey and Son well over a decade ago and have been meaning to revisit it ever since. It is one of the novels I see as underrated in the Dickens collection because of the way it portrays the relations between a father and his daughter. I find that this is probably the root cause of it being underrated because not many of the novels commonly read by Dickens have strong female characters, rather they have rugged little boys or old miserly men. I don't really count Nancy Sikes as a main character, but rather as a plot device to show how bad Bill actually was and of course, you have Mrs Havisham but it is rare that teenagers pick up Great Expectations or would even be able to read it nowadays (which makes me very sad). Dombey and Son has a female character of her own right who serves as both a plot device and a point of sympathy - but she is a, if not the, actual main character. Her name is Florence.

Paul Dombey Senior doesn't think a girl can inherit anything and he wants his sickly son to have it all. When his wife dies in childbirth, Dombey finally has himself a son, also called Paul. The first thing we can see is the same confusion of Paul Dombey to Paul Dombey that we have from Martin Chuzzlewit to the younger, Martin Chuzzlewit. Yes, we'll get over it, but I couldn't help but think back to that when I was reading this novel. When the son is still young, he proves frail and weak, ultimately passing away and leaving Paul Dombey Senior with only his daughter Florence, whom he ignores even though she dotes on him with respect and admiration. Honestly, Charles Dickens has a knack for writing asshole characters. We have the elder Martin Chuzzlewit, we have Bill Sikes, we have Paul Dombey Senior, we even have Scrooge and also, we have Uriah Heap. From brutes to schemers, from oppressive authoritarians to men who deceive and terrorise others - Paul Dombey falls firmly within a group of characters the Dickens reader is very familiar with.

When Dombey gets remarried, he marries a woman named Edith and she is just as cold as he is - they basically deserve each other. Florence's friend Walter is exiled by Dombey and ultimately it is thought that his ship has sank and he has died. Again, the arrogance of Dombey isn't lost on us, but what we're really waiting for is that moment of self-awareness that forces him to turn around and walk back. Throughout the novel, we see key examples of Dombey's behaviour escalating when it comes to control and the requirement to keep people almost afraid of him or begging for his attention. It is nearly machiavellian, it is without love, it is cold and brutal. Edith eventually flees to France with a friend and then Dombey begins to lose this control he massively wants - even forcing Florence to run away as well. But he is not done yet. It is only when his business - his pride and joy - collapses, that he starts to see the errors of his ways and it is a long time coming.

Dickens' stories may be this predictable round in which someone must realise the errors of their ways, but in Dombey and Son we get a more progressive exploration of it. Dombey must learn the very, very hard way to appreciate the women around him while they last - especially the kind and gentle Florence who has been my personal favourite character throughout. I genuinely loved the simplicity of this novel, it allowed Dickens to dive deep into themes, ideas and social commentary.