In Which Timely Provision Is Made for an Emergency That Will Sometimes Arise in the Best-Regulated Families explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Wealth and Morality

  Mr. Dombey treats the wet-nursing arrangement as a cold business transaction, highlighting the moral detachment of wealth.

• Pride and Ambition

  Mr. Dombey's pride leads him to pity himself through his son, and he insists on emotional distance to protect his ambitions.

• Family and Neglect

  Polly's forced separation from her own children contrasts with Mr. Dombey's neglect of genuine familial bonds.

Characters to notice

• Mr. Dombey

  Arranges for Polly Toodle as wet nurse, insists on a purely business arrangement, and privately grieves for his son and late wife.

• Polly Toodle

  Hired as wet nurse for the Dombey baby, reluctantly leaves her own family with great distress.

• Mr. Toodle

  Polly's husband, a laborer who works mostly underground and is skeptical of the arrangement.

• Mrs. Chick

  Assists in negotiating terms with Polly and tries to comfort her with promises of luxury.

• Miss Tox

  Supports Mrs. Chick in persuading Polly, emphasizing the privilege of caring for a child of the superior classes.

Key passages

• “Poor little fellow!”

  Mr. Dombey repeatedly mutters 'Poor little fellow!' as he grieves privately for his son.

  Reflects Mr. Dombey's self-pity projected onto his child.

• “When you go away from here, you will have concluded what is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting: and will stay away.”

  Mr. Dombey tells Polly that their relationship is purely contractual and that no emotional attachment should form.

  Emphasizes the transactional nature of the arrangement.

• “I should know her, anyhows and anywheres.”

  Mr. Toodle insists he would recognize his wife Polly no matter what, rejecting Miss Tox's suggestion that she would be transformed by fine clothes.

  Shows Toodle's loyalty and resistance to the class-based assumptions of the others.