Dombey and Son

Dombey and Son is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1848. Its title refers to a shipping firm and to the family that owns it, and the book is concerned with the connection between the two.

Paul Dombey runs his household the way he runs his business: calculatingly, callously and commercially. He has a son he intends to take over the firm and a daughter, Florence, whom he neglects, and the novel follows the consequences of both arrangements.

His relationships with his son, his two wives and Florence are all dysfunctional in different ways, and the book uses them to show the limits of a society dominated by commercial values and the drive for profit. The firm is the standard by which every relationship in the book is measured, which is why the private failures read as commercial ones.

It also explores the possibility of moral and emotional recovery, which is what the neglected daughter stands for, and it does so inside a long novel about a business and the people who are treated as parts of it.