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Charles Dickens's 'Dombey and Son' Part III

© A. Wilson

It is Chapter VIII of Dickens's 'Dombey and Son', "Paul's Further Progress, Growth, and Character" which establishes Little Paul as one of Carey's Dickensian Dwarves. Dickens shows Paul becoming "a walking, talking, wondering Dombey". His nursery has become a commission office of sorts for the administration and conservation of a Dombey; Paul, however, "remains delicate and pining after the loss of his nurse and his mother"; one must be nurtured and not artificially grown. Mr Dombey asserts that Paul is seen as an adult and not a child; Paul is in reality a physical manifestation of a commercial idea: "if there were a warm place in his frosty heart, his son occupied it; if its very hard surface could receive the impression of any image, the image of that son was there; thought not so much as an infant, or as a boy, but as a grown man- "the son" of the firm'.

More importantly, however, this is the chapter which firmly establishes the riddle of what the waves are saying as we see Dickens again placing a dying soul at the mouth of a river which will quickly usher them out into a sea of eternity. Paul's final meeting with the waves may also complete the redeeming qualities which were cancelled or missed at his christening. Paul will not be allowed to reach maturity but will die quite melodramatically in his bed. He had been visited by as many as three doctors; what is interesting here is the watch imagery again; Paul is able to distinguish the doctors from one another by the sound of their timepieces; perhaps little Paul, on the verge of death, is able to see Brother Time's scythe finally, and prematurely, aimed at him and thus prepares himself to die. However, with the introduction of his sister, Paul becomes childlike and animated as such. Paul's constant grooming and attendance was not conducive his happiness and it is only through the interception of both worlds that Paul appears as what he truly is: a frail and gentle child whose soul is indeed too large for the frame in which it was allowed to temporarily remain. Paul has had life in miniature although he considers most as dead with Florence, of course, being the exception :'Floy, are we all dead except you ?' It is quite poignant that Paul should be questioning the value of his life at his deathbed. He was, however born under such responsibility that he hasn't had a life to live; Paul's innocence had been stolen simply by the implications of his birth and is death perhaps foretold. 'How fast the river runs between its green banks and the rushes...but it is very near the sea. I hear the waves! they always said so!'

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