‘Common people to talk of Mr. Dombey and his domestic affairs!’

Developed from scholarship in recent decades that highlights the positive potential of gossip as a kind of discursive practice, this article addresses the politics of gossip represented by Charles Dickens in Dombey and Son. It examines how gossip is used as a plot device to insinuate the deepening crisis of the Dombey world, as well as how the devoiced subordinate people employ it as a discursive strategy to survive and negotiate with the supervisory power both within the household and the office. It argues that although the subordinate gossipers do not overthrow the power structure of the Dombey world that devoices them, their whispers in the marginalised space amount to significant pressure upon Mr. Dombey that equips them with agency for active survival and covert resistance while catalysing Dombey’s downfall. On the other hand, Mr. Dombey’s contempt for gossip denotes a form of moral neurosis typical of the middle-class Protestant economic man who views ‘idle’ activities as moral corruption. With his dismissal of idle talk, Mr. Dombey deprives himself of a valuable epistemic tool and renders his agency disempowered when misfortunes beset him both in the sphere of family and of business

Art history · Gossip · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · History · Law