Word: dombey
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Library for a study break. After scanning the shelves of English and American literature and deciding that I wasnt quite bored enough to make Henry James seem like a good idea, I emerged with the first volume of the centenary edition of Charles Dickens Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation...
Initially, I had reservations about the book; Dombey and Son is sort of second-tier Dickens, with especially broad characterizations and implausibly-integrated subplots. Buthaving already worked my way through first-tier DickensI persevered. Before long, I fell happily into the Dickensian rhythm: there were the requisite good lower-orders types and bad lower-orders types, the requisite super-virtuous young woman, the requisite scheming villains who would, I knew, ultimately be vanquished. By the time that the frail, angelic Paul Dombey (so frail and so angelic that his doom was assured from his first appearance in the novel that...
When I finished Dombey and Sons, I slid the green-bound volumes back next to Great Expectations with a sense of regret. Part of what I love about Dickens novels is their combination of predictability and novelty. Innocents will be menaced, but theyll come through all right or else die heart-rendingly; a young woman will be a paragon of moral virtue; there will be a cast of dozens, representative of several levels of British society. But there will be in that cast one or two really unforgettable characters, and sometimes the innocents will be menaced in really novel ways...
...reached the end of Dombey and Son last week, I read more and more slowly, putting the book down at increasingly frequent intervals. I wasnt ready to finish; I wasnt ready to abandon Florence or Walter or Captain Cuttle or Mr. Toots or Florences snappish-but-faithful dog, Diogenes. But people married and reconciled and died and before I knew it the book was over. It ended as many of Dickens novels end, with the older generation fading to insignificance, their wrongs righted or forgotten, and the younger generation brave and happy, ready to strike out on their...