Our Dickens Champions, MK Borrowers have been busy reading Dickens’ Dombey and Son. Here’s their latest blog post:
We had a lively discussion about Dombey and Son and most of us liked it with its host of memorable characters. Some thought it a long book to read in a month; noting that it was originally published in 19 monthly instalments, which may have given a different impression.
We decided that it is a very Dickens book with breathtaking coincidences and richly populated with characters that are perhaps caricatures of good, bad or comic traits for theatrical effect rather than believable portraits of people. But who can forget the brilliance of Mr Carker’s teeth and Captain Cuttle’s glazed hat? The book gives a panoramic view of Victorian life, encompassing the natural behaviour of the rich and poor:
“Alas! Are there so few things in the world, about us, most unnatural, and yet most natural in being so? Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctions between good and evil; unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in contumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything.” (Chapter 47)
The detested coming of the railways:
“There were railway patterns in its drapers’ shops, and railway journals in the windows of its newsmen. There were railway hotels, office-houses, lodging-houses, boarding-houses; railway plans, maps, views, wrappers, bottles, sandwich-boxes, and time-tables; railway hackney-coach and stands; railway omnibuses, railway streets and buildings, railway hangers-on and parasites, and flatterers out of all calculation. There was even railway time observed in clocks, as if the sun itself had given in.” (Chapter 15)
And the education of children through the Charitable Guild for Mrs Richards’ son (Toodle) and Paul’s private education with Dr Blimber.
We are looking forward to our next book, A Tale of Two Cities, which we shall discuss in the first week of June.
Our Dickens Champions
Watch out for our Dickens Champions’ blog posts as they read their way through Dickens during 2012.
Read Immaculate Conception Church reading groups thoughts on Dombey and Son and what they did when they finished it.
Check out our Dickens Champions photos on Facebook.
Reading Dickens in your reading group or book club? Get in touch or post a comment to let us know how you’re getting on.
