Talk:Dombey and Son

BBC radio adaptation
The BBC is currently broadcasting a radio adaptation, which you can listen to over the internet: Dombey and Son Nunquam Dormio (talk) 20:01, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Although I don't think Dombey and Son rates as one of Dickens's best books, it certainly helped me to while away the time during a period when I was not working and feel that it is still a good read, simply in terms of the range and breadth of Dickens's extraordinary imagination. Ivankinsman (talk) 17:13, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, no adaptation can match the pleasure of the book itself. Dick Scalper (talk) 14:26, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Railways
Doesn't the section that deals with the references to the railway in the novel overemphasize this aspect, especially by using the phrase "a strong theme"? Rwood128 (talk) 22:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The following sentence is also not true: "The main turns of action relate to the railways and the novel's conception, and writing, belong to the years of the railway boom, 1844-47". If there is a connection between Dombey's business failure and the boom, it isn't made explicit in the novel. Rwood128 (talk) 12:31, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

The source for the idea of the importance of the railway seems to be Humphrey House's The Dickens World (1941), and The Oxford Companion to English Literature sees "the effects of the railway" as "a dominant theme". However, I've just finished re-reading the novel, and my impression was that the references to the railway were not central. Anyhow, if a case can be made for the importance of the railways then citations and quotations are needed. Rwood128 (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Railways??? An extremely odd statement that “The main turns of action relate to the railways”. Only two of the large cast of characters have anything to do with railways. Mr Toodle becomes an engine driver (a more accurate term than the ambiguous American “engineer”) and James Carker, back in the UK after a long tedious journey across railway-free France, is killed by a non-stopping express. Don’t the main turns of action in fact relate to human relations, above all to the crucial relationship for the survival of society, that between two parents and their children? Hors-la-loi 18:25, 12 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hors-la-loi (talk • contribs)

Sentimentality
The comment, in the plot summary, "and the book ends with the highly moving lines", ignores the fact that this novel is often highly sentimental, and that some readers may see the ending as weak. Rwood128 (talk) 15:24, 13 January 2013 (UTC)