The novel Dombey and Son by C. Dickens and its place in the writer's work Contents

2.3.Characters the novel "Dombey and Son"
The story concerns Paul Dombey, a wealthy shipping company owner. The book begins with the birth of his long-awaited son. Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth. Following the advice of his sister, Mrs Louisa Chick, Dombey hires Mrs Tuddle, a kind and simple woman, the mother of a large family, as a nanny to her newborn son, obliging her to change her name to Richards and not to keep in touch with her own family (too "vulgar" in Dombey's terms). Dombey already has a six-year-old daughter, Florence, whom he constantly neglects and bitterly regrets that she is a girl, "a fake coin in the capital of the firm." One day, Mrs. Richards, Florence, and her young nanny, Susan Nipper, secretly visit Mrs. Richards ' home in Stegs Gardens so that Mrs. Richards can see her children. During this trip, Florence, who is lost in the hustle and bustle of the street, is tricked by an old beggar woman who introduces herself as good Mrs. Brown, takes off her expensive clothes, along with remembering and crying about her own daughter in distant lands, and then lets her go, having previously intimidated her. The girl makes her way to the business part of the city, where, by a happy coincidence, she meets a young employee of her father's company, Walter Gay, who takes her to the house of his uncle, an old ship's toolmaker, Solomon Gills, from where she is taken home by her own nanny. As a result of the uproar caused by Florence's disappearance, Mrs Richards is sacked - Mr Dombey is angry that his son was taken to the slums - and young Gay becomes the object of Mr Dombey's dislike.
Mr Dombey's son has taken the family name of Paul, and he is a weak and sickly child, very fond of his sister Florence, and prefers to associate only with her. Adults find him "out of this world" and quirky. His father, on the other hand, is blinded by ambitious plans to make him a partner in the firm. On the advice of the family doctor, he is sent to the seaside in Brighton, where the children live in the boarding house of a cruel and quarrelsome old woman, Mrs. Pipchin. Mr Dombey, finding that his son's health has somewhat improved, sends him to Dr Blimber's School, where the education of young gentlemen is forcibly instilled by intensive rote learning. The eldest of the pupils, the good-natured Mr Toots, the heir to a large fortune, becomes imbecile as a result of such mental efforts. Dr. Blimber's daughter, Cornelia Blimber, loads little Paul with school, which makes the child physically weak, and his only joy is visits from his sister on weekends. Florence, trying to help her brother, buys textbooks and goes through the entire curriculum on her own, so that at each meeting she can explain to him the material she has already passed. Before the school leaves for the holidays, Paul faints and goes home forever, trying to be remembered and liked by everyone before leaving, starting with his friend Mr. Toots and ending with the yard dog Diogenes.
Returning home, little Paul does not get out of bed and dies in the arms of his sister, and it seems to him that he is carried away by the river and he sees his dead mother. Before his death, at his request, he is visited by Mrs. Richards, whom Walter Gay helped to find, and little Paul asks his father to take care of his pet Walter.
Mr Dombey's grief, his bitterness at the failure of his plans for an heir, at the loss of a girl and not a son, prompts him to remove Walter Gay from the firm and appoint him to a minor position overseas, and to go on a journey with a new friend, Major Bagstock, who initially managed to make his acquaintance in spite of his neighbor Miss Tox. The latter had a great respect and love for Mr Dombey, and even dreamed of marrying him.
Uncle Walter's friend, the simple-minded sea-dog Captain Cuttle, believes that Walter and Florence will become husband and wife with Mr Dombey's blessing, for the story of their acquaintance is romantic, like the old legend of Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, and even sneaks into Mr Dombey's office, where he has a confidential conversation with the latter's first assistant, Mr Carker, the manager. Considering himself a shrewd and shrewd man, he blurts out all the hopes connected with Florence to Mr. Carker, who later uses this to further incite the father against his daughter.
While abroad, Mr Dombey meets Major Bagstock's old friends, Mrs Skewton and her beautiful daughter Edith, whom he marries to her mother's delight. However, the marriage was unhappy - he considered it the crowning achievement of any woman's dreams, but Edith considered it a shameful trade deal, and in a duel between his arrogance and her pride, Edith won. Mr Carker, the manager, systematically robbed Mr Dombey of money, bringing his firm to the brink of collapse in risky operations, and managed to persuade Edith to run away with him to France on their wedding anniversary. Florence, whom her father almost hated because she was genuinely loved by both his son and his new wife, tried to express her sympathy and offer her love, but her father blindly hit her and threw her out of the house. Florence ran off to see Mr. Solomon Gills. By that time, word had spread of the wreck of the ship on which Walter had sailed, and his uncle had disappeared from his shop, and Captain Cuttle was living there in his stead, who had taken the girl under his protection.
When Mr Carker, the manager, arrives at Dijon, looking forward to a happy life with Edith, he is cruelly deceived - she went with him only out of a vindictive feeling towards Mr Dombey, while he himself causes her only disgust and hatred. Threatening him with a revolver, Edith managed to escape. People are breaking in at the door of the rented flat-Mr Dombey has tracked down the fugitives, having paid for good Mrs Brown's information. She has her own reasons for hating Mr. Carker - he once seduced her daughter, driving her to arrest and exile from Britain, and refusing to help even a small amount. Unable to meet the man whose entire trust he has betrayed, Carker flees Dijon for England, pursued by his deceived patron and husband, and is run over by a train, meeting Mr Dombey face-to-face at a backwater station.
Florence is quietly living under the protection of Captain Cuttle when Walter, a shipwreck survivor, unexpectedly returns to town. Mistakenly assuming that he blames her for her father's actions, and mistaking his embarrassment and love for dislike, she learns that Walter loves and respects her, and agrees to marry him and sail with him across the sea.
Mr Dombey's firm had gone bankrupt, and he had used all his vast fortune to discharge fairly all the firm's obligations to its creditors. Alone in a once luxuriously furnished house, he hides from everyone, and remembers how many years ago he threw out his daughter when she came to him as a child after the death of her brother for comfort. He realizes that all his life his daughter was devoted to him and loved him, timidly, with all her heart. Exhausted by the memories, he is about to commit suicide, but at that moment, his daughter appears in the house, sobbing, begging to be forgiven, and he hugs her and cries on her chest. She takes him gently away with her, and Mrs Richards, the only remaining servant, and her friend Miss Tox, whose admiration for Mr Dombey is still the same, who has been hiding in the house, burst into tears and sent his things away.
After a long and serious illness, Mr Dombey has become a quiet, grey-haired gentleman who walks for hours on the seashore with his grandchildren - Florence's little son, who looks like his dead uncle, but is a strong and healthy child, and the little girl, whom he hugs and kisses most tenderly, weeping and repenting of his past cruelty to her mother. Walter's career is going up, and as Miss Nipper - by then Mrs Toots-says, thanks to Dombey's daughter, the firm will rise again.