Dombey And Son
May. 10th, 2022 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI've nearly finished Dombey and Son. Dickens is at the stage where he's tidying things up, getting people married off, awarding after lives. It's like the final scene of a Shakespearian romance, only very much longer. I'm tempted to skip.
The first two hundred pages approx- corresponding to the first six issues of the book in serial form- are as good as anything he ever did. Thereafter he treads water, then sets off in another direction. There's some excellent comedy, some rousing melodrama and far too much about the sufferings of Florence Dombey who has to be the wettest of his many submissive, everlastingly weepy heroines. She weeps when she's sad, she weeps when she's happy. She's the very model of a self-pitying emo kid and everyone around her thinks she's an angel.
Next up, in order of publication, is David Copperfield.
The first two hundred pages approx- corresponding to the first six issues of the book in serial form- are as good as anything he ever did. Thereafter he treads water, then sets off in another direction. There's some excellent comedy, some rousing melodrama and far too much about the sufferings of Florence Dombey who has to be the wettest of his many submissive, everlastingly weepy heroines. She weeps when she's sad, she weeps when she's happy. She's the very model of a self-pitying emo kid and everyone around her thinks she's an angel.
Next up, in order of publication, is David Copperfield.
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Date: 2022-05-10 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-10 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-10 04:28 pm (UTC)Possibly Agnes Wickfield. 😀 But she's a plot device necessary to introduce the devious (and magnificent) Uriah Heap.
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Date: 2022-05-10 04:35 pm (UTC)David himself becomes much less interesting as he grows up. Dickens could have used him to give us the inside dope on the life of a workaholic, professional writer, but doesn't really even try. I presume it would have involved more introspection and self-accounting than he was willing to undertake.
I wonder what David's books were like...
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Date: 2022-05-10 05:59 pm (UTC)I reckon there is a novel to be written around all the characters Dickens sends to Australia! :o)
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Date: 2022-05-11 06:55 am (UTC)