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Passage Illustrated: Edith's guilt at abandoning Florence

When the evening had set in, she heard, from the room in which she sat on purpose, a footstep on the stairs that she thought to be Edith’s. Hurrying out, and up towards her room, Florence met her immediately, coming down alone.

What was Florence’s affright and wonder when, at sight of her, with her tearful face, and outstretched arms, Edith recoiled and shrieked!

"Don’t come near me!" she cried. "Keep away! Let me go by!"

"Mama!" said Florence.

"Don’t call me by that name! Don’t speak to me! Don’t look at me! — Florence!" shrinking back, as Florence moved a step towards her, "don’t touch me!"

As Florence stood transfixed before the haggard face and staring eyes, she noted, as in a dream, that Edith spread her hands over them, and shuddering through all her form, and crouching down against the wall, crawled by her like some lower animal, sprang up, and fled away. [Chapter XLVII, "The Thunderbolt," 236-237]

Commentary: Further Embedded Emblems of Female Purity and Sacrifice

Steig notes how Phiz again uses emblematic details to comment upon the collapse of the Dombey marriage. As he explicates the various neoclassical paintings and statues such as Sacrifice of Iphigenia (left) he makes subtle connections between this and the previous illustration, Abstraction & Recognition (also December 1847). The emblems imply feminine purity, but the interior furnishings, taken as a whole, suggest that interior design regards female beauty as strictly ornamental. Edith rebels against such make domination and refuses her husband to put her in what he regards as her place within his establishment. She refuses to be mere decoration.

Edith's flight follows from Carker's plans made during his "abstraction"; but the pairing implies a link between Alice and Edith as each raises her left hand to her mouth. Again, Browne has posed his characters theatrically without falling into absurdity. But in this plate perhaps more than in any other, full significance of the illustration is conveyed by the emblematic details taken together. The position of the topmost detail, an oval painting of a young woman holding a dove at her bosom, suggests a guiding principle for reading the plate. Browne's use of a similar image in later years is probably reliable evidence of its meaning here. At some point before 1859 (when he moved away), the Croydon Board of Health asked him to design a new seal for them. He first submitted a full-length drawing of a young woman holding a dove much as in the detail for the staircase plate; it bears the caption "Purity," and beneath, "Sans Tache." (Thomson, p. 223; reproduced on p. 221.) The placement of an emblem representing spotless purity at the very top of the present etching implies a hierarchy of values, and Browne's device conveys not only purity, through the dove, but spiritual love, since the bird is succoured at the girl's breast.

In the lower half of the design we find two pieces of statuary flanking Edith and Florence that respectively refer to Dombey's treatment of Florence and to Edith's conduct and the situation she has become enmeshed in. The left-hand statue depicts a man about to sacrifice a young woman with his knife; the probable allusion is to Agamemnon and Iphigenia, a father sacrificing his daughter to what he thinks are higher principles. The other statue represents Venus holding the apple she had been awarded by Paris, and the implications are bitterly ironic: it is Carker who is Paris in the novel, choosing Edith over the other two women he has favored in the past, Alice Marwood and-as we are liable to forget-Florence Dombey. Above Edith, the wall plaques are Thorwaldsen's popular reliefs, "Night" and "Morning," both of which show children borne aloft by maternal angels; they evoke the twice-thwarted motherhood of Edith. The remaining emblem is a figurine directly below the emblem of Purity depicting a woman riding on a quadruped which to all appearances might be a bear or some member of the cat family. T. W. Hill, without any explanation, says this is "Una and her lion" a reference to The Faerie Queene; the assumption is reasonable, since Una (Truth) would consort very well with an image of Purity. Part XIV of Dombey and Son included, among other advertisements, a page by Felix Summerly's Art Manufacturers which refers to "PURITY, OR UNA AND THE LION, a Statuette. Designed and modelled by John Bell." However, the reference continues that the statuette is "a companion to Dannecker's Ariadne, or Voluptuousness;" and it is to this second sculpture that Phiz's detail in fact bears its strongest resemblance. The motif is that of Ariadne on her panther, and to carry out the allusion produces interesting results: Dombey would be Theseus, who deserted Ariadne, while Carker is Dionysus, arriving on his panthers to abduct her. The ironies are considerable, however, since it is Edith who, physically at least, abandons Dombey, and Carker's function as a Dionysus is largely in his own "voluptuous" mind rather than in Edith's response to him. [101-103]

Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son

• Dombey and Son (homepage)
• O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1862)
• O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1862)
• O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1862)
• Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
• Fred Barnard's 61 illustrations for the Household Edition (1872)
• Groome's illustrations of the Collins Pocket Edition of Dombey and Son (1900, rpt. 1934)
• Kyd's five Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910
• Harry Furniss's illustrations for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. The illustrated library Edition. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, c. 1880. Vol. II.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). The Clarendon Edition, ed. Alan Horsman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 61 wood-engravings. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.

_________. Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. IX.

Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 16: Dombey and Son." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. 17, 294-337.

Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London (1899) edition.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Ch. 12, "Work, Work, Work." Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004, pp. 128-160.

Steig, Michael. Chapter 4. "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 86-112.

Vann, J. Don. Chapter 4."Dombey and Son, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, October 1846-April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. 67-68.

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