Begun whilst in Lausanne, away from home, London and favourite walks, Dombey and Son is about failed communities and aloneness, “dreary” homes and travel, unwelcome reunions and partings, in a world rather like our own, where finance, goods, commerce and people circulate in an increasingly globalised way. If, as is often supposed, later novels like Bleak House are “about” the often-hidden links between people, Dombey and Son is particularly concerned with the disconnections, discontinuities and gaps between people in a world of economic, social and colonial flux. Indeed, the two approaches are not as dissimilar as they may first seem: a book about hidden links may actually be the same thing as a book about …
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Citation: Taylor, Jonathan. "Dombey and Son". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 October 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5550, accessed 26 November 2024.]
