Although the title of this novel is also that of a business, of which Dombey is the proud owner, one learns little about what actually goes on there. The focus is on Dombey himself and his family. The first part of this novel, until the death of the ailing son, is absorbing but the promise is not kept. Florence, the neglected daughter of Dombey, is too good to be true. It is scarcely credible that she maintains her affection for her father through all his slights until he finally strikes her after his desertion by Edith. The story of Dombey’s courting and marriage to Edith and his manager Carker’s role in her leaving him is overly melodramatic. Yet it does provide Dickens with an opportunity for some wonderful purple prose describing Carker’s flight back to England:

“Of rolling on and on, always postponing thought, and always racked with thinking; of being unable to reckon up the hours he had been upon the road, or to comprehend the points of time and place in his journey. Of being parched and giddy, and half mad. Of pressing on, in spite of all, as if he could not stop, and coming into Paris, where the turbid river held its swift course undisturbed, between two brawling streams of life and motion.”

The “of’s” continue and provide a pounding rhythm which completely conveys the atmosphere of the desperate flight. It made me think that Dickens would have reveled in cinema and probably become a marvelous director.

The novel is redeemed by some of the minor characters, of which my favourite is Cap’n Cuttle, who lives in terror of the wily Mrs MacStinger, but has a heart of gold. Then there is Edith’s mother – definitely mutton (or old goat) dressed as lamb, Mr. Toots and his eventual bride the sharp-eyed Susan, previously Nipper, and the redoubtable Major Bagstock – J.B. or Joey B., as he refers to himself.

Dickens is almost too careful to provide a tidy ending with marriages all round and even Edith dying with the comfort of Florence beside her and Dombey an unexpectedly fond grandparent. Happy but contrived!