Key themes
- Paternal ambition and the children it crushes
- The railway age and what it destroys as it builds
- Pride, money and the difference between valuing someone and loving them
About this book
Dombey and Son is both a firm and a family and the ambiguous connection between public and private life lies at the heart of Dickens' novel. Paul Dombey is a man who runs his domestic affairs as he ru
Published serially 1846-48, Dombey and Son was the first novel in which Dickens worked from a detailed plan prepared in advance. It sold well on publication but has been somewhat overshadowed by his later novels in critical attention.
Discussion questions
- Paul Dombey treats his daughter Florence with coldness because she isn't his son. How does Dickens develop this relationship over the novel — and does the transformation Dickens gives Dombey feel earned?
- The railway is one of the novel's great presences — both literally and symbolically. What does Dickens want us to understand about what the Victorian railway meant to people who lived through its arrival?
- Little Paul Dombey is one of Dickens's most affecting child characters. His death halfway through the novel is one of the most famous in Victorian fiction. How does Dickens use it to reorient the novel's entire argument?
- The novel is less frequently read than Dickens's other major works. What does it offer that Great Expectations or Bleak House does not?
- Dickens's novels were published serially and he tracked reader response carefully. How do you think the serial form shaped Dombey and Son — and would you read it differently if it had been published as a single volume?
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