<I>Dombey and Son</I> and the “Parlour on Wheels”

The Railway and the River: Conduits of Dickens’ Imaginary City

“…As Klotz observes, 42 this scene puts Dombey in the position represented in 'Over London by Rail,' another engraving by Gustave Doré. 43 Here, a train passes over a viaduct in the background, while a long row of terraced houses and yards fills the rest of the scene.…”

“…This new repression is aided by the anaesthetising qualities of the train's soft furnishings; Klotz notes that railway carriages, particularly in first class, replicated bourgeois homes, as in Augustus Egg's painting The Travelling Companions (1862), where two middle-class woman sit in a comfortable train carriage, one reading a novel while another sleeps. 38 Neither looks out at the landscape, from which they are both separated and protected.…”