Mr. Jellyby is the husband of Mrs. Jellyby and the father of Caddy, Peepy, and the other Jellyby children. Mr. Jellyby is totally defeated by his wife’s obsessive philanthropy. He cannot earn enough to supply her missions and ends up going bankrupt as a result. He is deeply unhappy because his house is a mess and his children are uncared for, but he cannot muster the energy to take these matters into his own hands, and instead sits miserably with his head against the wall. Mr. Jellyby loves his eldest daughter, Caddy, and is delighted when she gets married and strives to be a domesticated wife for her husband, Prince. He thanks Esther Summerson for her influence on Caddy because Esther is emblematic of a good housekeeper and a good maternal figure in the novel. Through Mr. Jellyby, Dickens emphasizes the damage and unhappiness that Mrs. Jellyby’s obsessive and ineffective philanthropy creates.