PDF Dombey & Son Download
- Author: Charles Dickens
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- Languages : en
- Pages : 486
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Paul Dombey is a cold, unbending, pompous merchant, and a widower with two children - Paul and Florence. His chief ambition is to perpetuate the firm-name. He dreams of passing his business on to his son. Dombey dotes on his son, and neglects and mistreats his daughter.The "son" in the title of the book is incapable of ever joining the firm. A sickly and odd child, Paul dies at the age of six. Dombey pours his resentment and anger out on his daughter, whom he pushes away despite her efforts to earn her father's love.Eventually Dombey remarries, after literally acquiring his new wife from her father in a commercial transaction. Dombey is as bad a husband as he is a father and his marriage is loveless. His new bride hates Dombey and eventually runs off with Canker, his business manager. Dombey characteristically blames Florence for this reversal, and strikes her, causing Florence to run away as well.Abandoned by everyone, Dombey loses his business and goes half insane, living in his decaying house. Dombey is eventually reconciled to his daughter, who always a doormat forgives her father........
This eBook edition of "Dombey & Son" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Paul Dombey is the wealthy owner of the shipping company, whose dream is to have a son to continue his business. When his son is born, Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth. The child, named Paul after his father, is a weak and sickly child, who does not socialize normally with others. He is intensely fond of his sister Florence, who is deliberately neglected by her father as irrelevant and a distraction. Young Paul's health declines even further and he dies, still only six years old, and he is left only with his daughter, whom he pushes away while she futilely tries to earn his love.
It is widely known that Charles Dickens gave public readings of his works, and that those readings were enormously popular. Far less well known are the stories themselves; these were not, as is the modern fashion, taken verbatim from the published novels. Instead, Dickens trimmed, reworded, and re-shaped material from the novels to create stories that would be self-contained artistic entities. These concise “performance fictions,” shaped in every way to be accessible to a broad audience, are in many ways an ideal introduction to Dickens’s work for the modern reader. Four of the most successful of these short works have been selected for this volume, including “The Story of Little Dombey” (perhaps the most emotionally affecting of all the readings, and described by Dickens as his “greatest triumph everywhere”) and the violent and suspenseful “Sikes and Nancy” (Dickens’s overpowering performances of which were said to have contributed to his death). Provided in the contextual materials is a selection of reviews and contemporary descriptions that comment on Dickens’s manner of performance and audience reception. A brief excerpt from Dombey and Son is also included, illustrating the extensive revision process that led to “The Story of Little Dombey.”
The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens offers a valuable introduction to Dickens for students and general readers.