'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-'.
Although Dickens was referring to the comparative social conditions of the England and France of 1775 in the opening paragraph of his A Tale of Two Cities, he had also described the Mid-Victorian Britain in which he lived. His was also a time of great contradictions between extreme poverty and wealth, extravagance and squalor, with the world of the upper-classes seemingly existing independently and in ignorance of the world of the impoverished. The characters that Dickens created allow us as readers to view his world and are memorable because they are imperfect, honest, and real: they are in essence, human. Many of his characters such as Oliver Twist, Pip, and David Copperfield were products of opportunity which allowed them to escape their threat of poverty to achieve an element of fulfilment, and above all, to posses a secure future, a possession that in the London of the Nineteenth Century would have been a treasured one indeed. The background in which Dickens wrote Dombey and Son was an exciting one: the effects of the 1832 Reform Act were still in the process of making themselves clear and Chartism was on the decline after almost a decade of protest and social and political battles by the time Dickens had hinted in his correspondence at the novel in late 1843 and early 1844.
The relationship between Paul and Mr. Dombey is one which purpose lies primarily in the creation of money and in continuing Mr Dombey's commercial ventures thus making Paul , like money, a fairly artificial concept whilst Mr. Dombey is a man misguided by complacent materialism and his own purpose in life. By a study of the concurrent themes of nature versus artificiality within the major chapters in Dombey and Son, it can be illustrated that such a relationship is innately corrupt and that which is allowed to flourish naturally will survive and test the theme of self-determinism vs. fatalism within a society which was obsessed by industrialisation and a work ethic which was created by a competitive society in an attempt to excuse the 'new' poverty that they had help to create. Chapter 1 introduces us to the concept of Dombey and Son as both a commercial and personal entities and we see Paul's character as being predestined to die and therefore introduces us to Dickens's first metaphorical use of nature imagery to suggest that it is nature which will dominate over man and not the inverse. Mr. Dombey, a usually cool and contained man, finds himself on the verge of affection towards his wife for his realisation of the completion of his firm in both fact and notion creates a spark of life within him which he hadn't felt in forty-eight years. He allows himself to address his wife as "dear" but only once as the glimpse of affection is fleeting and passes as quickly as it came leaving him still exultant but as he was before: marked "as a tree" by the Brothers Care and Time which was due to fall within the human forests.
