Dickens Takes His Bearings

By Donald Phelps

In Dombey and Son the railway and the sea are two huge presences that confront each other like opposing deities.

The railway, ever changing and peremptory, disrupting space and disdaining time, embodies the spirit of the age and typifies the seemingly insuperable force of Man's will. But the sea is also a mighty and preemptive force; it can be, at times, the pliant tool of Man's will and benevolent supporter its his projects; at others it can be his Nemesis, reminding him that it defines earthly space, makes Man's time its plaything and has absolutely no need of him or his projects.

"Symbol" seems too brittle, too paltry a term for these presences as Dickens imagines and vitalizes them. They are organic and embody overriding, imperious forces in both society and human emotion. Their suggestions multiply without cancelling or blocking each other. They outstandingly represent the alienation of the male and female principles: an unnatural alienation, which Dickens saw as central to the oppressions and inhuman indifference of his age.

Dombey and Son displays Dickens's rediscovery of the novel as a new kind of organism, bidding farewell at last to the childhood models of Fielding and Smollett. His role as entertainer is never abandoned but is now overshadowed by the newer one of Prophet and Guide. In his hands the novel has now progressed from spectacle to revelation. Destiny is changed from the tool of melodramatic stagecraft to a spiritual issue and to a tragic theme that encompasses the British nation and in it all of mankind.

The sea theme lends breadth and depth to Dombey and Son. It will appear and re-appear in various aspects of David Copperfield, for example. Here. however, it has the formidable status of a character, like one of those viragoes, forceful, even punitive when necessary, but gracious and protective as well, as exemplified in the characters of Betsy Trotwood and Miss Pross. It can be an agent of separation and loss: witness the loss of Walter Gay, Florence Dombey's suitor and a source of loving concern to readers. The sea has taken Captain Cuttle's hand and deprived him and his friend Jack Bunsby, even Sol Gills himself, of many a shipmate. Yet, these men all regard the sea with a mellow familiarity, free of bitterness. We particularly enjoy Gills and his grandson, Walter, reviewing the dates and locations of disasters at sea.

The railway, that product of Man's genius and instrument of his will, brings about the death of Carker, the intelligent and overreaching villain. But the sea is both an agent of salvation and of loss. Like the good housewife of Scripture it can both repair and remodel. And so, for Dickens who regarded loyalty and gratitude as paramount virtues, the sea is not only the Great Mother Who only restores little Paul to his mother in death; She is also his final nurse

 

Donald Phelps, an ardent Dickensian, is a writer and film critic living in New York City.