Love Your Children: Dombey and Son
Note on the text: I used Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son as published by the Heritage Press in 1957.
[There is] not an orphan in the world who can be so [well] described [i.e. as an orphan] as a child who is an outcast from a living parent’s love (316).
Every parent wants the best for the their children. Every parent frets constantly over how to provide the best life for their children. Dickens himself had 6 children by the time this book was published in 1846, and I’m sure sure he felt the same way about his kids as every parent does. I’m sure that he wanted to do everything he could to make sure that his kids had good lives. He worked very hard to make sure that their every need was met. However the very best thing that a parent can do is love their kid unconditionally, and that message really comes through clearly in this book. It is more important for a child to know that they are loved then it is for them to grow up with money or even to have a good education. Love will go further in helping a child to reach his or her potential than any of those other things will.
Paul Dombey Sr is the head of a company, called Dombey and Son, and when the book first opens he is welcoming his first son, also called Paul, into the world. It is clear from the very opening pages that he has been waiting for a long time to have a son that he can one day bequeath his company to:
Dombey and Son. . . . Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey’s life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them the promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits to preserve inviolate a system of they were the center. Common abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to [the company]: A.D. had no concern with anno Domini [i.e. After Christ] but stood for anno Dombei- and Son (4).
So we can see immediately why Paul Dombey Sr is so excited about having a boy. This is also when we first realize that he actually already has a child, Florence, that he just doesn’t think is “worth mentioning. There had been been a girl some six years before. . . . But what was a girl to Dombey and Son! In the capital of the House’s name and dignity such a child was merely a base coin that couldn’t be invested in- a bad Boy- nothing more” (5). He doesn’t love Florence, at least not in any significant way. At best he tolerates her. He doesn’t necessarily hate her outright, but he doesn’t love her because he doesn’t have any use for her in his world. More than that, we come to find out throughout the course of the book that he doesn’t really love anyone. Now that doesn’t mean that he sees other people worthless pieces of garbage, but that he only loves them for what they can do for him not for who they are in themselves, and that includes not only Florence but his wife and son too. When he finds out that his wife will probably die after the birth of his son, he is upset at the idea that she might die but not for the reasons that you might expect. Like I said before,
to record of Mr. Dombey that he was not in his [own] way affected by [the news that his wife might die] would be to do him an injustice. He was not a man of whom it could be said that he was ever startled or shocked; but he certainly had a sense in him that if his wife should sicken and decay, [that] he would be very sorry, and that he would find a something gone from his plate and furniture, and other household possessions, that was worth the having, and could not be lost without sincere regret (7).
He thinks, in particular, that she would be a great mother to Paul, and when she does die he becomes upset that “the life and progress on which he built such [high] hopes should be endangered at the onset by so mean a want” (17). Thus you can see the way in which he views the people around them. He doesn’t love anyone for themselves, but for the ways in which they can help him. His wife can help him by being a good home maker and mother to his son, and his son can help him by carrying on the family legacy (i.e. running the family company). He is not sad because his son will grow up without a mother, and because of the trauma which that will cause, but because he thinks that it will derail the “train of success” that he thinks his son is on.
Later on, Mr. Dombey sends Paul off to a well established boarding school so that he can get an excellent education. But, as I said in the beginning, every child needs the love and support of people around him if he is going to succeed, and Paul is no different. In fact, without that love and support, Paul quickly begins to flounder and struggles to stay afloat academically, to the point where the head of the school, Mrs. Pipchin, decides that she needs to talk to Mr. Dombey about Paul. Again when Mr. Dombey hears about his son’s struggles his instinct is not to think of his son as a person and to reflect on why his son might be struggling, but to say that “instead of being behind his peers, [his] son ought to be [beyond] them; far [beyond] them. There is an eminence ready for him [i.e. Paul] to mount upon. There is nothing of chance or doubt in the course before [his] son. His way was clear, prepared, and marked out before he [even] existed” (130). Again, there is no thought to who Paul is as a person. He doesn’t even love Paul in that way. All he cares about is that Paul stay on the “train of success” that Mr. Dombey set him on before Paul was even born.
Now Florence on the other hand has a totally different experience of the world. Although her dad doesn’t love her, everyone else in her world does. People, such as her nanny Susan Nipper, try to fill up her world with as much love as they can and to fill up the void in her that was left by her uncaring father. Susan in fact tell Mr. Dombey to his face that she is kindest, sweetest child there ever was, and that she is growing up to be a fantastic woman despite having been emotionally neglected by him. Florence has a whole team of people around her who are there to cheer her on and and lift her up. She knows how important it is to feel loved by those around you. Now she truly loves her brother Paul and wants to do everything in her power to see him succeed in life. So when she hears that he is struggling in school, she decides to tutor him herself and as a result of that he starts getting better grades: “She sat down by his side and showed all that was so rough made smooth, and all that was so dark [was] made clear and plain before him. . . . “Oh Floy’ cried her brother, ‘How I love you!” “And I, you, [my] dear” (153). Again, Mr Dombey doesn’t really love his son. Not only does he never tell him that he loves him, but it doesn’t really occur to him that Paul might need his help. Florence on the other hand not only tells her brother that she loves him, but also does her bet to show her that she loves him by trying to help him. It is because of Florence’s love for her brother that he starts to succeed. Without it, he would have failed.
Another, some would say even bigger, example of this comes in the character of Edith and her mother Cleopatra. Edith is a miserable woman who although she has done fairly well for herself in life, she becomes Mr. Dombey’s second wife, is extremely miserable. From the moment she enters onto the scene until the moment she leaves it, she is miserable, unhappy, and more than that, is aware that she does not know how to be otherwise. She talks constantly about how she would love to be able to be warm, happy, and to both love others and be loved by them, she doesn’t know how to do so because her mom never taught her. She didn’t grow up in a house with love and therefore, even though she is living a “successful” life, it isn’t a happy one. She is an important character to note because again all parents want their children to be successful, and that definition of successful often includes happiness. Parents want their children to lead be happy AND successful, and Cleopatra was no different. She wanted her daughter to succeed in the world, and gave her the tools she thought she needed to do so. However she, like Mr. Dombey, completely underestimated just how important it was to make sure that Edith knew how loved she was. So when Cleopatra asks Edith why she hates everyone (including herself) and why she is miserable all of the time, Edith tells her that is because she has “never known what it is to have. . . love” in her life (359). That instead of showing her child what love was and teaching her how to love, she taught her how to be “artful, designing, mercenary, [and lay] snares for men” (359). Now again, did this help Edith to become a successful woman? One could argue yes because she is married to a successful and rich man, something which was highly prized in the Victorian era. But it robbed her of the chance to be truly happy in this life. So in reality I would say no, that Cleopatra did not give Edith the best life she could have.
At every point in the book the message remains the same: Parents, love your children! That is the most important thing that you can do for them.
