ABSTRACT While much has been written about Charles Dickens’s figuration of the daughter as a means of salvation for the capitalist father in Dombey and Son, the figure of the pet, which bears enormous ideological weight, is underanalysed. Attending to the style, content, and purposes of the symbolic and psychic economy of the pet, I argue that the distinction of public and private on which Dickens relies is interchangeable with another dichotomy he labours to establish between the untamed and the domestic. Examined from this angle, the novel’s chief concern is with the possibility of becoming human - that is to say domesticated - within a relentlessly feral world. It is through intersubjectivity that the stray canine becomes Diogenes the pet, a process that prefigures, and as I will show intimately related to, Paul Dombey’s own metamorphosis.

中文翻译：

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成为人类：唐贝和儿子与宠物的经济

摘要尽管关于查尔斯·狄更斯（Charles Dickens）对女儿的塑像作为多贝和儿子的资本家父亲的救赎手段的文献很多，但对宠物的塑像却缺乏足够的思想意识。考虑到宠物的象征性和心理经济的风格，内容和目的，我认为狄更斯所依赖的公共和私人区别可以与他为在驯服和驯养之间建立的另一二分法互换。从这个角度来看，这部小说的主要关注点在于在残酷的野性世界中成为人类的可能性，也就是被驯化的可能性。正是通过主体间性，流浪犬变成了宠物第欧根尼（Diogenes），这是一个先发的过程，正如我将证明的那样，保罗·唐贝自身的变态也与之密切相关。