Charles Dickens's 'Dombey and Son' Part IV

Dickens's treatment of Railwaymania in Dombey and Son may be best seen through Chapter VI, entitled Paul's Second Deprivation, in which we see Dickens's railway as an ineffectual triumph of industry over land with his direct comment of the phenomena with his invention of Staggs Gardens: a suburb which was known to its inhabitants by the name of Camberling Town. Dickens likens the advent of the railway into the town as an 'earthquake' as 'houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood.'. Dickens again applies something natural to what is artificial as he compares progress to what may also be seen as inheritantly destructive and impotent: there were 'bridges that led no where' , 'Babel Towers of chimneys', Chaos of carts' and 'unnatural hills'; mechanical progress that is unnatural is not progress at all but is in fact struggling commercialism. The railway was not bringing in any real development to Staggs Gardens; railways by this time were still under development 'In short, the yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was in progress; and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement.'

Inhabitants of this new suburb were reluctant to invest in the railway; several speculators had begun building but had stopped short of completion the rest of the town, however, had attempted to capitalise on the projected trade associated with the new form of transportation: businesses were renamed: the pub became the 'Railway Arms'; the excavator's house of call sprung from the beer shop, and the old 'Ham and Beef Shop' became 'The Railway Eating House' all with the hopes of catering to the workmen; the villagers apparently lack the foresight to cater to the passengers themselves; perhaps the railway's commercial potential like the firm of Dombey and Son, is doomed to failure from its conception because of its innate artificiality.

Mr. Toodles, however, is allowed to benefit from this machine on its course of its improvement; again Carlylean wisdom and criticism would be appropriate: 'Idleness is worst, idleness alone is without hope: work earnestly at anything...there is endless hope in work.’ Dickens’s suburbanites were pacifly watching this new form of enterprise whilst Toodles was actively involved and was attempting to raise his family;

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