Dombey and son

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The character of Captain Cuttle, one of the supporting characters from Dickens' novel Dombey and Son
The figure of Toots, one of the admirers of Florence, neglected by Dombey

Dombey and Son , original title Dombey and Son , is a novel by the British author Charles Dickens . It first appeared as a serial in a newspaper in 1847 and 1848. The novel describes how the callous and proud businessman Mr. Dombey falls, but becomes kindhearted thanks to the influence of his long-neglected daughter Florence. The death of Paul Dombey, the only son of Mr. Dombey, is one of the most famous death scenes in the Victorian novel . Like many of Dickens' novels, Dombey und Sohn is characterized by a multitude of brilliantly drawn secondary characters.

In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted the novel one of the most important British novels .

action

The novel begins with Mr. Dombey, the wealthy, proud owner of the Dombey shipping line and son, father of a son who is baptized Paul. However, his wife dies giving birth to Paul. The father's love and all ambition are centered on this son, a strange, precocious, and ailing child. Paul goes to the school of Dr. Blimber sent, but where he falls ill and dies a little later.

Florence is Paul Dombey's older sister, but she is neglected by Mr. Dombey. The alienation between father and daughter increases when Paul dies. Walter Gray, a kind-hearted young employee of Mr. Dombey, falls in love with Florence. He is sent to the West Indies by Mr. Dombey because Mr. Dombey is hostile to the relationship between his employee and his daughter. The ship with which Walter Gray sails is shipwrecked on its way to the West Indies and it is certain that Walter Gray was killed in the process.

Mr. Dombey remarries - his wife is the proud but impoverished young widow Edith Granger. Dombey's condescending treatment drives her into the arms of Dombey's deceitful steward, Carker, who escapes with her to France. Dombey follows them to France and when Carker and Dombey meet in a train station, Carker falls on the railroad tracks and is killed by an approaching train. A little later, Dombey und Sohn had to file for bankruptcy. Dombey has now lost his fortune, son and wife. Florence has since left her father and marries Walter Gray, who survived the shipwreck. The deeply humble Dombey lives lonely and abandoned for a long time until Florence returns to him and softens his heart.

Publication time

In addition to Dombey and Son , several novels were published in 1847, which are now classics of British and world literature. The literary sensations of this year included Dombey and son Charlotte Brontës Jane Eyre , Vanity Fair by William Thackeray and the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë , published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell .

Trivia

  • Dickens repeatedly took up current events in his novels or referred to events that particularly preoccupied the British public. In Dombey and Son there is a reference to the Ratcliffe Highway murders that occurred more than 30 years earlier . In this criminal case in December 1811 seven people were murdered on two separate nights in an eastern suburb of London in their homes directly on the Ratcliffe Highway or in its immediate vicinity. A hammer was considered a tool. The case attracted a great deal of attention in Great Britain and for decades undermined the population's trust in local administrative units and their ability to maintain law and order. In London they resulted in a central police unit being created. Dickens alludes indirectly to this murder case: When Captain Cuttle, who lives near the murder scene, one day leaves his shutters closed, his neighbors speculate that he was probably lying on the stairs by a hammer. At the time this novel was published, a large number of contemporaries should still have understood the allusion to the murders more than three decades ago.
  • Ada Lovelace , the British mathematician who is now counted among the pioneers of programming , asked Charles Dickens in 1852, when she was already on her death bed, to visit her and read to her the death scene of Paul Dombey from Dombey and Son . When it was published as a serialized novel, the scene had already moved the British nation as much as the death of little Nelly in Dickens' novel The Rarities Shop .

literature

  • Margaret Drabble (Editor): The Oxford Companion to English Literature , Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985.

Single receipts

  1. ^ A b c Margaret Drabble (editor): The Oxford Companion to English Literature , Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985.
  2. ^ The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? , accessed on January 2, 2016
  3. John Sutherland & Stephen Fender: Love, Sex, Death & Words: Surprising Tales from a Year in Literature . icon Books Ltd, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-84831-269-2 , p. 459
  4. ^ Judith Flanders: The Invention of Murder - How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Invented Modern Crime . Harper Collins Publishers, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-007-35247-0 '. P. 16.
  5. ^ Judith Flanders: The Invention of Murder - How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Invented Modern Crime . Harper Collins Publishers, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-007-35247-0 . P. 10.
  6. James Essinger: A Female Genius: How Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's Daughter Started The Computer Age . Gibson Square. London 2014, ISBN 978-1908096661 . Ebook position 2564