OK, that's your warning elapsed.
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR JULY CHAPTERS.
Right, so this was a shocker for us this month. Ummm… Dickens, Old Chap, what’s with the book title?!?? That’s very cheeky!
I know Dickens featured a lot of child death, and that Victorians were surrounded by this. I also noticed all the foreshadowing but I was still shocked and genuinely felt sad. Yes, granted , Paul was a bit drippy but he was so lovely and adored Florence so that I shall forgive the maudlin death passages. There are some really interesting passages on grief and mourning in this section I think. As I said last month, I really don’t dislike Dombey – even though he is so horrifically cold about his daughter to the point he has forgotten she exists. He seems a product of his time and class. His sister, however, dreadful woman, once more going on about lack of ‘effort’. No one seems to admire Flo’s resilience.
To cheer us all up there were some great comedic turns in this section. I am liking the addition of ‘Cleopatra’ and daughter. I genuinely laughed at the mutton dressed as lamb comment of ,'[they] found Mrs Skewton arranged, as Cleopatra, among the cushions of a sofa; very airily dressed; and certainly not resembling Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, whom age could not wither.’
I enjoy the 3rd person Major and his spats with Mrs Skewton. Clearly the beautiful , aloof daughter is pencilled in for Mrs Dombey 2.0. Interesting that Dombey asks if she has a son, and we learn that she did, and he drowned.
The passage about the train and its similarity in velocity to the onslaught of death is a Dickens tour de force – it’s too long to replicate in its entirety in my post really but it’s powerfully rhythmical, auditory and dramatic. It’s like if you wanted to find a typical descriptive Dickens passage, you’d go for this. Here’s a snippet:
‘Through the hollow. On the height, by the orchard, by the park, by the garden, over the canal, across the river, where the sheep are feeding, where the mill is going, where the barge is floating, where the dead are lying, where the factory is smoking, where the stream is running, where the village clusters, where the great cathedral rises, where the bleak moor lies, and the wild breeze smooths or ruffles it at its inconstant will ; away with a shriek , and a roar , and a rattle, and no trace to leave behind but dust and vapour; like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!’
Best of all in this section is the extended metaphor of Carker the sinister cat with his teeth- ‘Everybody blessed the gentleman with the beautiful teeth, who wanted to do good’. I am guessing good teeth were enough of a rarity in Victorian times for Carker’s splendid ones to be very unusual and Carker sure deploys his like the Cheshire Cat -but of course smiling has always been sinister (I have been known to refer to people as 'him with the teeth' or 'her with her hair', 'that one with the eyes and the legs') - I love the way Dickens uses the real dog, wonderful, Florence-adoring Diogenes, to go into battle against this metaphorical hellcat. Isn’t Diogenes great? His first introduction is marvellous; ‘ a blundering, ill-favoured clumsy, bullet-headed dog, continually acting on the wrong idea that there was an enemy in the neighbourhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at … certainly not clever, and had hair all over his eyes , and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff voice.’ We are told ‘he is unlike a lady’s dog as might be’ and is loved by Florence. Awww. Inconsistent tail, is the best description ever! There’s clearly lots of intrigue to come as concerns the Carker family and the mysterious sister. Carker’s skulduggery makes him a fairly typical Dickens schemer, so we’ll see what he gets up to.
Until it was made clear that Toots pined after Florence, I assumed he was an old man, so obviously wasn’t paying attention earlier. I tittered at his attempts at writing an acrostic to Florence which has not got any further than ‘For when I gaze’ .
In amongst all this, Walter had gone off on the aptly named ‘Son and Heir’ and this plot will surely develop.
It’s been another good section and (so far!) , I am keeping on top of (nearly all!) the characters, old, new, and returning.