Dombey and Son · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens.
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Florence Dombey
major
Also known as Miss Florence, Little Florence, Miss Floy, Floy, Florence Dombey
Florence grows up in the shadow of her father's obsession with his son and heir, treated as an afterthought in her own home. Her warmth and devotion to little Paul stand in stark contrast to the emotional frost of the Dombey household, and her father's indifference wounds her even as she refuses to stop loving him. She matters because her patient, aching loyalty becomes the moral center of the novel's early arc, quietly measuring the cost of pride.
Paul Dombey
major
Also known as Master Paul, Little Paul, Paul Dombey, Little Paul Dombey, Poor Paul
Little Paul is the cherished hope of the firm of Dombey and Son, groomed from infancy to become the man his father already converses with in his imagination. Yet the boy is wan, wistful, and unnervingly thoughtful, prone to brooding in his miniature armchair and asking his father what money is. His odd, sage-like gravity and fragile health make him the emotional fault line of the early novel, exposing the hollowness beneath Mr. Dombey's pride.
Mr. Dombey
major
Also known as Dombey, Mr. Dombey, Paul Dombey Sr.
Mr. Dombey is a man of frozen dignity who regards his son less as a child than as the future embodiment of the firm's grandeur, planning for a grown man while ignoring the boy in front of him. His parental affection, such as it is, traces to a very low foundation of selfishness, and his coldness toward his daughter Florence is as instinctive as his pride. He matters because his monumental vanity sets the tragedy of the household in motion and defines the world his children must survive.
Edith Dombey
major
Also known as Edith, Edith Granger, Edith Dombey
Edith Granger enters the Dombey household as a trophy wife, married for her beauty and connections rather than affection, and she knows exactly what the transaction is. Proud, intelligent, and deeply resentful of being treated as property, she meets Mr. Dombey's icy dominance with a defiance he cannot comprehend. Her presence in the middle of the novel sharpens the conflict between pride and feeling, and her bond with Florence complicates the household in ways Mr. Dombey never anticipates.
Walter Gay
major
Also known as Walter, Wally, Young Walter, Walter Gay, Gay, Mr. Walter
Walter is the good-natured nephew of Solomon Gills, the nautical instrument-maker, and a junior clerk in the Dombey counting-house where his honesty and open temper stand out against the firm's cold formality. He adores Florence from afar with a loyalty that costs him dearly, and his fortunes become entangled with the Dombey family in ways that test his optimism. He matters because his kindness and perseverance offer the novel a moral alternative to the world Mr. Dombey has built.
Captain Cuttle
major
Also known as Captain Cuttle, Ned Cuttle, Captain Edward Cuttle, the Captain
Captain Cuttle keeps watch over Solomon Gills's shop and Walter Gay's fortunes with a devotion as sturdy as his wooden hand, forever quoting his friend's wisdom and making himself useful in gloriously muddled ways. Bluff, sentimental, and utterly incapable of guile, he embodies the homely decency Dickens sets against the cold grandeur of the Dombey world. He matters because his loyalty and comic warmth give the story its emotional shelter, a place where love is not a transaction.
Mr. Carker
major
Also known as Carker, Mr. Carker the Manager, James Carker, Jem Carker
As Dombey's second in command, Carker moves through the firm's affairs with a deference so smooth it reads as menace, his face shifting from obsequious grin to frowning scrutiny the instant his employer looks away. He needles Dombey about society and daughters with feigned humility, savoring each flicker of discomfort he provokes. His interest in Florence and his watchful intimacy with the family's private life make him the quiet engine of unease in the novel's middle stretch.
Susan Nipper
supporting
Also known as Susan Nipper, Miss Nipper, Susan, Nipper, the Nipper
Susan Nipper has waited on Miss Floy since the child could barely speak, and her loyalty has hardened into something fierce and unapologetic. When Mr. Dombey lies helpless on his sofa, she seizes the moment to tell him exactly what his daughter is worth, heedless of her own position. Her blunt, breathless defiance gives the household its only honest voice, and her devotion to Florence anchors the reader's sympathy through the family's coldest years.
Mr. Toots
supporting
Also known as Toots, Young Toots, the innocent Toots, Mr. Toots
Mr. Toots drifts through Dr. Blimber's establishment in a fog of good intentions and confused arithmetic, cheerfully unable to remember whether the firm is Dombey and Son or Son and Dombey. He is ridiculous without being unkind, and his earnest, muddled admiration for Florence gives him a dignity he never quite manages in conversation. As the boys around him grow sharp and pale, Toots's softness becomes a kind of moral counterweight to the world's calculation.
Solomon Gills
supporting
Also known as Solomon Gills, Sol Gills, Uncle Sol, Old Sol, Sol, Mr. Gills
Sol Gills keeps his shop, his nephew, and his hopes with the same gentle, misty persistence, watching the door for customers who rarely come. His investments and his faith in Walter's future are the twin burdens of a man too soft for the counting-house world that surrounds him. When the firm of Dombey and Son casts its shadow over Walter, Sol's small, decent household becomes the measure of what commerce casually destroys.
Miss Tox
supporting
Also known as Miss Tox, Lucretia Tox, Tox
Miss Tox hovers at Mrs. Chick's elbow, commiserating on cue and elevating her eyebrows at every expected sorrow, her devotion to Mr. Dombey a quiet, unspoken ache. Elevated to godmothership precisely because she can threaten nothing, she accepts the office with the gratitude of someone used to being useful rather than wanted. Her soft, misplaced tenderness toward the Dombey household exposes how much warmth the family's grandeur leaves unclaimed.
Mrs. Chick
supporting
Also known as Mrs. Chick, Louisa Chick, Louisa, Chick
Mrs. Chick presides over the nursery and the family's opinions with a sigh of modest merit, quick to pronounce that Florence will never, never be a Dombey. Her loyalty to her brother's grandeur is absolute, and her sympathy for anyone outside it is thin. As the household's chief arbiter of who belongs, she helps set the cold terms on which Florence must live, making her auntly judgments feel like verdicts.
Mrs. Skewton
supporting
Also known as Mrs. Skewton, the Honourable Mrs. Skewton, Cleopatra
Mrs. Skewton drifts through fashionable watering-places in a wheeled chair, rouged and ringleted, insisting on being called Cleopatra while she arranges Edith's match with Mr. Dombey. Her charm is a business asset and her maternal affection a negotiating tactic; she wants luxury, adoration, and a titled son-in-law, and she will spend her daughter to get them. She matters because she embodies the transaction at the heart of the Dombey marriage, making visible how genteel society converts women into currency.
Major Bagstock
supporting
Also known as Major Bagstock, Bagstock, Joe Bagstock, Old Joe Bagstock, Joey
Major Bagstock, retired from the army and bloated with self-regard, cultivates Mr. Dombey's friendship at Leamington and Brighton, forever boasting of 'old Joe' and his toughness. He is selfish to the stomach, jealous of any rival for attention, and comically wounded when Miss Tox forgets him. His flattery and meddling help push Dombey toward Edith, making him the story's most grotesque instrument of social engineering.
Rob the Grinder
supporting
Also known as Rob, Grinder, Rob the Grinder, Robin
Rob the Grinder, son of the honest Toodles, is put to work at Mr. Dombey's warehouse and later taken up by Captain Cuttle, but his restless ambition and taste for easy money keep him drifting toward dangerous patrons. He is clever, resentful of drudgery, and easily bought, a boy whose future hangs between the decent world and the criminal one. His wavering loyalty makes him a small but telling index of how the novel's London rewards and corrupts the poor.
Polly Toodle
supporting
Also known as Polly, Toodle, Polly Toodle, Richards, Mrs. Richards
Polly Toodle, wife of a stoker and mother of a brood, is engaged by Mr. Dombey on condition she answer only to 'Richards' and sever contact with her family. Her natural warmth floods the cold house, and her love for Paul becomes the first real affection he knows, even as her own children wait at home. She matters because she exposes the cruelty of Dombey's world and gives the novel its clearest image of ordinary, unpretending love.
Harriet Carker
supporting
Also known as Harriet Carker, Harriet, Miss Harriet
Harriet Carker shares her brother James's name but none of his coldness, dwelling in a modest cottage with her other brother John and a household of rescued creatures. She loves James without illusion and grieves for the ruin she senses in him, her tenderness standing as a quiet rebuke to his polished cruelty. Her patient goodness gives the novel a moral counterweight to the Carker name and quietly shapes how we read the family's fate.
Cousin Feenix
supporting
Also known as Cousin Feenix, Feenix, Lord Feenix
Cousin Feenix, a man-about-town of forty years ago, turns up at the Dombey-Granger marriage in Bond Street, amiable, well got-up, and hopelessly circuitous in speech. He is kindly where the rest are calculating, and his muddled decency makes him an unwitting witness to the family's coldness. He matters because his genial, slightly absurd presence throws the Dombey household's joylessness into relief and later gives Edith a rare ally.
Alice Marwood
supporting
Also known as Alice, Marwood, Alice Marwood, Ally
Alice Marwood moves through the novel's shadow-world of debt, shame, and grudge, her bitterness sharpened by years of punishment for a crime others escaped. Her hunger for revenge fixes on those who used and discarded her, and she becomes a dark mirror to the respectable cruelty that ruined her. In the early-middle arc she is a threat and a warning: proof that the city's outcasts keep accounts of their own.
Good Mrs. Brown
supporting
Also known as Good Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Brown, Misses Brown
Good Mrs. Brown haunts the novel's margins as a figure of predatory poverty, stripping Florence of her fine clothes and her innocence in a single afternoon. Her menace is not loud but acquisitive: she hoards knowledge of other people's sins the way she hoards rags, and she later trades that knowledge to Alice. She matters because she shows how the respectable world's secrets circulate among the very poor it pretends not to see.
Mrs. MacStinger
supporting
Also known as Mrs. MacStinger, MacStinger, the dreadful Mrs. MacStinger
Mrs. MacStinger presides over her lodgings as a petty tyrant, her respectability a weapon she wields against anyone who threatens her order. Captain Cuttle, who has faced storms at sea, lives in mortal dread of her tongue and her umbrella, and his terror is one of the novel's richest comedies. She matters because she embodies the domestic power that humbles the masculine bluster around her, and because her pursuit of the Captain drives some of the book's most delightful scenes.
Doctor Blimber
supporting
Also known as Doctor Blimber, Doctor, Blimber, old Blimber
Doctor Blimber runs his school as a factory for premature gentlemen, his pupils stuffed with classics until they resemble little old men. His pedagogy is relentless and cheerfully inhuman, and the fragile Paul Dombey is sent into this mill of learning by a father who wants a grown son immediately. He matters because his school is where Dickens shows the cost of treating children as instruments of family ambition, and where Paul's strange, wistful nature is most exposed.
Cornelia Blimber
minor
Also known as Cornelia, Cornelia Blimber, the abstruse Cornelia
Doctor Blimber's learned daughter, who tutors the boys.
Mr. Feeder
minor
Also known as Mr. Feeder, Feeder, Mr. Feeder, B.A., the Reverend Alfred Feeder
Assistant master at Blimber's school, later marries Cornelia.
Mr. Toodle
minor
Also known as Mr. Toodle, Toodle, young Toodle, Toodle Junior
Polly's husband, a stoker on the railway.
Perch
minor
Also known as Perch, Mr. Perch, the unoffending Mr. Perch
Messenger and clerk at Dombey's office.
Mrs. Wickam
minor
Also known as Mrs. Wickam, Wickam, Berry
Nurse to Paul and later Florence at various times.
Diogenes
minor
Also known as Diogenes, Di
Florence's loyal dog, a gift from Walter.
Mr. Bunsby
minor
Also known as Mr. Bunsby, Bunsby, Captain Bunsby, John Bunsby
Eccentric, oracular sea captain friend of Captain Cuttle.
Towlinson
minor
Also known as Towlinson, Mr. Towlinson
Butler in the Dombey household.
Sir Barnet Skettles
minor
Also known as Sir Barnet Skettles, Sir Barnet, Barnet, Skettles
Neighbor and MP who befriends the Dombeys.
Mrs. Pipchin
minor
Also known as Mrs. Pipchin, the doughty Mrs. Pipchin, the sardonic Pipchin
Cantankerous old woman who runs a boarding house for children.
Mr. Morfin
minor
Also known as Mr. Morfin, Morfin
Kind, thoughtful clerk at Dombey's, friend to Harriet Carker.
John Carker
minor
Also known as John Carker, Mr. John Carker, Mr. Carker the Junior, the grey Junior
James Carker's older, disgraced brother, humble and hardworking.
Briggs
minor
Also known as Briggs, Master Briggs, Mr. Briggs
A boy at Blimber's school, often bullied.
Tozer
minor
Also known as Tozer, Mrs. Tozer, Mr. Tozer, old Tozer
A boy at Blimber's school and his parents.
Mrs. Perch
minor
Also known as Mrs. Perch, Perch
Mr. Perch's wife, often pregnant.
Fanny
minor
Also known as Fanny, Poor Fanny, poor dear Fanny
Mr. Dombey's first wife, who dies after giving birth to Paul.
Papa
minor
Also known as Papa, dear Papa, Dear Papa
Florence and Paul's father, Mr. Dombey.
Mrs. Blimber
minor
Also known as Mrs. Blimber, the discreet Mrs. Blimber
Doctor Blimber's wife, who runs the household at the school.
Mr. Chick
minor
Also known as Mr. Chick, Chick
Mrs. Chick's meek, henpecked husband.
Lady Skettles
minor
Also known as Lady Skettles
Sir Barnet's wife, a society hostess.
Master Bitherstone
minor
Also known as Master Bitherstone, Bitherstone
A boy at Mrs. Pipchin's and later Blimber's school.
The Game Chicken
minor
Also known as the Chicken, The Chicken, Chicken, the faithful Chicken
A professional boxer and friend of Mr. Toots.
Mrs. Miff
minor
Also known as Mrs. Miff
Pew-opener at the church where Dombey marries.
Doctor Peps
minor
Also known as Doctor Peps, Doctor Parker Peps, Parker Peps
Fashionable physician attending Mrs. Dombey's childbirth.
Mr. Pilkins
minor
Also known as Mr. Pilkins
Family doctor to the Dombeys.
Brogley
minor
Also known as Brogley, Mr. Brogley
Money-lender who threatens Solomon Gills's shop.
Miss Pankey
minor
Also known as Miss Pankey, little Miss Pankey, Pankey
A young girl at Mrs. Pipchin's boarding house.
Old Glubb
minor
Also known as old Glubb, Glubb, the absent Glubb
An old man who tells stories to Paul at Brighton.
Withers
minor
Also known as Withers, Withers the Wan
A pale, sickly servant in the Dombey household.
Alexander MacStinger
minor
Also known as Alexander MacStinger, Alexander, young Alexander
One of Mrs. MacStinger's many children.
Juliana MacStinger
minor
Also known as Juliana MacStinger, Juliana
Another of Mrs. MacStinger's children.
Betsey Jane
minor
Also known as Betsey Jane, Jane
A MacStinger child.
Mrs. Granger
minor
Also known as Mrs. Granger, Granger
Edith's mother's friend, mentioned in passing.
Jack Bunsby
minor
Also known as Johnny, Bunsby, Jack Bunsby
Alternate name for Captain Bunsby.
Mrs. Bokum
minor
Also known as Mrs. Bokum
A woman who keeps a boarding house.
Mr. Baps
minor
Also known as Mr. Baps
A dancing master.
Jack Adams
minor
Also known as Jack Adams, Jack
A sailor friend of Captain Cuttle.
Mrs. Toodle
minor
Also known as Mrs. Toodle, Toodle
Polly Toodle's mother-in-law.
Biler
minor
Also known as Biler, little Biler
One of Polly Toodle's sons.
Mr. Sownds
minor
Also known as Mr. Sownds the Beadle, the Beadle, Beadle, Mr. Sownds
The beadle at the church.
Miss Berry
minor
Also known as Miss Berry, Berry
Mrs. Pipchin's niece and assistant.
The Reverend Melchisedech Howler
minor
Also known as the Reverend Melchisedech Howler, the Reverend Melchisedech
A ranting preacher who rents Mrs. MacStinger's house.
Lieutenant Walters
minor
Also known as Lieutenant Walters, Walters
Walter Gay's father, a deceased naval officer.
Mama
minor
Also known as Mama, Dear Mama, dear Mama
Florence and Paul's deceased mother, often remembered.
Son
minor
Also known as Son, Son Dombey
The longed-for male heir, Paul Dombey.
Cook
minor
Also known as Cook
A servant in the Dombey kitchen.
Madame
minor
Also known as Madame
A French maid or dressmaker.
Mrs. Feeder
minor
Also known as Mrs. Feeder, Feeder
Mr. Feeder's wife, formerly Cornelia Blimber.
Mrs. Toots
minor
Also known as Mrs. Toots, Mr. and Mrs. Toots
Mr. Toots's wife, formerly Susan Nipper.
Skettles Junior
minor
Also known as Skettles Junior
Son of Sir Barnet Skettles.
Master Skettles
minor
Also known as Master Skettles, Mr. Skettles
Another son of Sir Barnet Skettles.
Staggs
minor
Also known as Staggs, the Staggs, Mr. Staggs, Mrs. Staggs
A family mentioned in passing.
Mr. Clark
minor
Also known as Mr. Clark
A clerk at Dombey's office.
Tom Johnson
minor
Also known as Johnson, Tom, Tom Johnson, Tommy
A sailor or acquaintance.
Bill Bitherstone
minor
Also known as Bill Bitherstone, Bill
A relative of Master Bitherstone.
Kate
minor
Also known as Kate
A servant or minor character.
Martha
minor
Also known as Martha
A servant in the Dombey household.
Grangeby
minor
Also known as Grangeby
A name associated with Edith's past.
