Dombey and daughter

So I'm wondering if I should go to Backyard tomorrow night or put it off until Mark's birthday...I haven't been this year, which of course has nothing to do with Dickens, just me rambling.

I wish I had written this post right after I had raced through Dombey and Son, unable to sleep, unable to put it down, picking it up surreptitiously at the office and in between assignments and during tea breaks.

In short, I loved it.

I didn't expect to.

But I did.

Before I had only read the first page and the utter coldness of the principle character and the fact that he was such a male chauvinist pig, put me off. Indefinitely. In fact, if I hadn't make a resolution to read ALL of Dickens, I would have probably given Dombey and Son a miss for the rest of my life.

But that was not to be. Dickens 2012 came along, and with it, my extraordinary resolution to read all of Dickens. And that included Dombey. Which doesn't tell you very much about Dombey. Just about my not reading it.

So I read. And I started to get into it. Even the coldness of Dombey failed to ice me over. I guess, it's because Dickens juxtaposed that with the stuff that was going on underneath his glacial exterior. How hurt he was that his son clung to his daughter instead of him. How he resented his affections going elsewhere. How the flatterers pandered to his weakest side and lulled him into a false sense of security.

His obdurate refusal of his daughter's love. The part where, when his son died, he wanted his tombstone to read "beloved only child" rather than "beloved only son" because he actually forgot that he had a daughter.

When the second Mrs Dombey came along, I was ready for her. But Dickens subverted the expectations. Edith was no cruel stepmother. In fact, she loved her stepdaughter more than she loved her husband. Recognising that she had been purchased by Mr Dombey like a piece of fine art, she refused to act like a piece of property he could show off. No, she was proud and angry and unwilling to submit. She fought him tooth and nail. And he got back at her the only way he knew how. Through Florence whom she loved. And by issuing his orders via a menial (his lieutenant as a subtle way of saying that the menial, a man, was superior to her).

I don't blame her for what she did. He pushed her over the edge. So she utterly destroyed him.

Edith was a very complex character...neither an angel nor a devil, but both in equal parts. It was the presence of people like her, and that woman whose name I cannot remember (see, it's been a while since I finished and I can't decide what to read next because Edwin Drood is not gripping me like it should) and when I had just finished I was so full of the story.

In the end I felt sorry for Mr Dombey when he lost everything and when he was forgiven (sort of the way Cordelia forgave Lear...well, Florence didn't "forgive" him, she begged his forgiveness for running away) I was happy.

That is the magic of Dickens. He can make you hate a character, but not too much that you do not forgive it. And if he has really painted something so awful that you cannot, he usually kills it off.

Witness that dwarf in Old Curiosity Shop. And Mr Carker in Dombey. I'm surprised that he didn't kill of Horlick in Great Expectations (although he did kill of Pip's sister whom he may have hated worse than Horlick).

I found Paul's death a lot more touching than Little Nell's. Well, you know how I felt about little Nell, and more importantly, her stupid grandfather. There was an element of that with Florence and her father...her inability to see his flaws.

Anyway, I loved the book and I read it very quickly.

And now I have Edwin Drood, Hard Times, the Christmas books and Sketches by Boz to go.

A far far better thing

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known..."

So I went from the interminable Little Dorrit to the much much better Tale of Two Cities. It was fantastic. I read it through in a few days (unlike Little Dorrit which dragged on for like, a month or more) and by the end I was racing through. I cried at the closing lines, of course even though I expected them.

Sidney Carton's character was interesting; in the end he proved the better man and he sacrificed everything for his love. And lived on evermore in her son named for him.

Charles Darnay, on the other hand, was colourless. I think he put his life and that of his family, needlessly at risk by going to Paris to "rescue" an old servant and a good man's life was lost because of it. Some may argue that Carton's life was worth nothing anyway, because of his aimlessness and the fact that he had lost the only thing which could have concentrated his affected, his stray powers, and made a man of him. And this death allowed him a nobility and honour that his life didn't.

But still, it was hard to see him go. Offering comfort to the poor seamstress at the end, dying with a "sublime peace" on his face.

So much needless slaughter. Madame Guilottine was a character in itself.

Madame Defarge was a monster of course. I quite liked the final confrontation between her and Miss Pross. I wish it had been more drawn out and more comic in character. I wish that stupid woman had suffered a little bit more when she died. But no, she just expired and then was locked in a house and left to rot. The other assassins were not as compelling - Vengeance, Jacques the Third...

Dickens made a case for the Revolution. But he did not agree with the way it was conducted. On the one hand, he excused it. On the other, he punished it. Especially at the end, when he prophesied what was going to happen to each of the main characters. That was satisfying, somehow. But after Madame Defarge was killed, I didn't have ire enough left over for the rest.

It was a good, good book.

I enjoyed it thoroughly.

And now, on to Dombey and Son.