A Tale of Two Cities - Homepage | Williamsburg-James City ... · A Tale of Two Cities ... tale for his own nation, a warning that, if genu- ... detail as places of disorder and injustice

A Tale of Two CitiesA Tale of Two Cities is set before and during theFrench Revolution, and examines the harsh con-

ditions and brutal realities of life during thisdifficult time. While the conditions before the

revolution were deplorable, things were farfrom ideal afterward as the violence toward,

and oppression of, one class was reversed oncethe poor overthrew the nobility. In the end, the

only glimmer of hope comes with the heroicsacrifice of Sydney Carton, as he gives his life

for the good of others.

According to Dickens’s Preface, the inspira-tion for the story came from two sources. The

first was Wilkie Collins’s play The Frozen Deep,in which two rivals unknowingly embark on the

same doomed Arctic expedition, and one endsup dying to save his rival. The second was

Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: AHistory. The details in the portions of A Tale of

Two Cities that take place in France closely echoCarlyle’s work, and critics have noted that

Carlyle’s account seems to be Dickens’s onlysource of historical information.

One of the most-discussed aspects of A Taleof Two Cities is the ambivalence with which

Dickens seems to regard the revolution and therevolutionaries. Although he clearly under-

stands why the French people rose up to over-throw their government and seize power for

themselves, he seems troubled by the manner inwhich this occurred. The violence and brutality

4 9 4

CHARLES DICKENS

1859

of the revolution clearly bother him, and the lackof any real change, since the oppressed becomethe new oppressors, is an unnecessarily tragicoutcome of the otherwise justified pursuit of abetter life by the lower classes.

Dickens’s central concern, both in the noveland in his life, is how to achievemeaningful socialchange without violence and chaos. He sees peo-ple’smentality asbeing significantly shapedby theinstitutions that govern their lives. Thus, even ifthe institution goes away, the mentality producedby it still remains. He describes how this happensin his depiction of the French Revolution: theoppressed do not find a newway to govern, ratherthey simply repeat the practices of the previousrulers, the very practices that led the oppressed torevolt in the first place.

For Dickens, the way out of this dead end isfor individuals to change their ways of thinkingin order to bring about meaningful institutionalchange and thus social progress. As NicholasRance notes in ‘‘Charles Dickens: A Tale ofTwo Cities’’ (1859), Dickens tends ‘‘to subordi-nate the historical event to the illumination ofprivate character,’’ for he sees individuals as thetrue engines of historical change. Carton is themodel for this sort of change, as he graduallyemerges from his selfish laziness and makes hisfinal, dramatic sacrifice for the good of others.

Although he clearly favored the measured,gradual process of reform, Dickens worried thatthe pace of change in Britain was too slow andthat the unmitigated misery of the poor mightlead to violence. His account of the French

Revolution is thus, in many ways, a cautionarytale for his own nation, a warning that, if genu-ine changes are not made, the ruling class couldface the inexorable revenge of those pushedbeyond the limits of human endurance.

PLOT SUMMARY

Book the First: Recalled to LifeA Tale of Two Cities begins with one of the mostfamous passages in all literature. This passagenot only conveys a sense of the confusion of the

THE NEW ERA BEGAN; THE KINGWAS TRIED,

DOOMED, AND BEHEADED; THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERTY,

EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, OR DEATH, DECLARED FOR

VICTORYORDEATH AGAINST THEWORLD IN ARMS; THE

BLACK FLAG WAVED NIGHT AND DAY FROM THE GREAT

TOWERSOF NOTRE DAME; THREEHUNDRED THOUSAND

MEN, SUMMONED TO RISE AGAINST THE TYRANTS OF

THE EARTH, ROSE FROM ALL THE VARYING SOILS OF

FRANCE.’’

BIOGRAPHYCharles Dickens

Charles Dickens, one of England’s most famousand beloved authors, was born February 7, 1812in Portsmouth, England. As a child, Dickensloved reading, but only received a couple ofyears of formal education. Though he camefrom a middle-class family, his father was sentto debtor’s prison after overspending on enter-tainment, and his family lived in a tiny cell inMarshalsea Prison for three months. YoungDickens was sent to work in a shoe polish factoryat age twelve to support his family. Because ofthis experience, he spent his adult life advocatingfor the poor and writing novels in which hissympathy for them—and outrage at those whoexploit and mistreat them—is evident.

By the time Dickens wrote A Tale of TwoCities, he was already a popular and well-regarded author, having published such classicsasOliver Twist (1838),AChristmas Carol (1843),and David Copperfield (1849). A Tale of TwoCities was written in the wake of the 1848Revolutions that occurred throughout Europe,which led Dickens to worry that a violent upris-ing would occur in Britain.

Dickens died June 9, 1870. None of hisbooks has ever gone out of print, a testamentto his enduring popularity with readers throughthe modern age.

A T a l e o f T w o C i t i e s

L i t e r a r y T h e m e s f o r S t u d e n t s , V o l u m e 2 4 9 5

time and the difficulty of making sense of it, but

also establishes a direct parallel between the per-iod leading up to the French Revolution and the

time in which Dickens writes his book, over sixty

years later. The first chapter elaborates upon the

time period in which the novel begins (1775),

describing both France and England in bitter

detail as places of disorder and injustice where

the ruling classes care nothing for the suffering

of the lower classes. The first chapter ends with a

sense of foreboding, of unavoidable fate leading

inevitably to death, as events are set down‘‘along the roads that lay before them.’’

The action of the novel begins in November1775 with Jarvis Lorry, a British banker, travel-

ing from London toDover on his way to France.His coach is overtaken by Jerry Cruncher, a

messenger from Lorry’s employer, Tellson’s

Bank, instructing him to wait at Dover for a

young woman. Lorry sends back the cryptic

message ‘‘recalled to life,’’ and awaits the arrival

of Lucie Manette, who is to accompany him to

France. Upon her arrival, Mr. Lorry, who was a

friend of Lucie’s dead father and who took her to

England after she was orphaned in France, tellsLucie that her father is, in fact, still alive after

having been unjustly imprisoned for eighteenyears. Mr. Lorry is going to Paris to verifyDr. Manette’s identity, and Lucie must alsocome to ‘‘restore him to life’’ after being ‘‘buriedalive’’ for so many years.

The story shifts to Paris, where the scenebegins with an extended metaphor that prefi-gures the bloodshed and destruction of the revo-lution to come. A cask of red wine drops andbursts on the street. A mob of poor people des-cends upon the wine, scooping it up with theirhands and gleefully licking their fingers. Oneman, Gaspard, dips his finger in the wine andwrites the word ‘‘blood’’ on the wall. This sceneoccurs outside of the wine shop of Monsieurand Madame Defarge, former servants ofDr. Manette who have been entrusted to carefor him since his release from the Bastille, themost notorious prison in France. Mr. Lorry andLucie arrive and visit Dr. Manette, who is phy-sically and mentally fragile. He does not realizethat he is no longer in prison and sits alone in anattic making shoes, oblivious to his new sur-roundings. Although he does not recognize hisold friend, Mr. Lorry, he sees Lucie’s resem-blance to his dead wife, which brings him atleast partially out of his fog and leads to anemotional reunion. Mr. Lorry then takes theManettes back to England.

Book the Second: The Golden ThreadThe events shift five years into the future. Dr.Manette is recovering well under the care of hisdaughter. Cruncher, the bank messenger of theopening scene, is called to court to assist Mr.Lorry during the trial of Charles Darnay, aFrench immigrant to Britain. Darnay, a gentle-man, is charged with treason, accused of helpingFrance fight against the British in the AmericanRevolution.

During the trial, John Barsad andRoger Clyare called as eyewitnesses to Darnay’s participa-tion in the plot, as is Mr. Lorry, who is askedto identify Darnay as a fellow passenger on theboat to and from France. The Manettes are alsocalled to identify him, although Dr. Manettecannot do so because of his poor condition atthe time. Just as things look dire for Darnay, asingular event occurs—a member of the trialaudience, Sydney Carton (who happens to be afriend of Darnay’s lawyer, Mr. Stryver), turnsout to look just like Darnay, thus putting all of

Book illustration from A Tale of Two Citiesª Stapleton Collection/Corbis


4 9 6 L i t e r a r y T h e m e s f o r S t u d e n t s , V o l u m e 2

the witness identifications in doubt. Darnay issubsequently acquitted.

After the trial, Carton and Darnay dinetogether. Neither man is particularly fond ofthe other, but both are enamored of Lucie, whois clearly falling in love with Darnay. Carton isdescribed as a bit of a drunkard who is disap-pointed by life and has no ambition. ‘‘I am adisappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man onearth, and noman on earth cares for me,’’ he tellsDarnay. However, despite their differences, theyare described as each other’s ‘‘counterpart,’’ andCarton muses to himself about changing placesand having Lucie look on him as she doesDarnay.

Four months after Darnay’s trial, theManettes are doing well and both Carton andDarnay stop by often to pursue Lucie’s affec-tions, although Carton does not appear to reallywant them. There is some concern about Dr.Manette’s mental well-being as Mr. Lorry andLucie wonder if he is repressing his memory ofhow he came to be imprisoned. One evening,Darnay mentions his experiences as a prisonerin the Tower of London while awaiting trial, anddescribes how some workmen, while performingrepairs, had discovered a message written by aprisoner hidden under the stone floor. Dr.Manette has a brief fit, but does not say why heis so unnerved by what Darnay said. As they allsit in the garden, a foreshadowing occurs as thefootsteps of an unnamed and unseen multitudecan be heard echoing on the stones of the streetsaround them, unnerving all but Carton, whowelcomes the ‘‘great crowd coming one dayinto our lives.’’

In Paris around the same time, the MarquisSt. Evremonde, a French nobleman who alsohappens to be Darnay’s uncle, visits the homeof Monseigneur, an aristocratic clergyman.Monseigneur is a representative of the decadent,selfish, vain, and extravagant ruling class whofeel that ‘‘the world was made for them.’’Dickens humorously mocks him, describing,for example, how it takes four servants to pre-pare and serve his chocolate:

One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the

sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed

the chocolate . . . a third, presented the

favoured napkin; a fourth . . . poured the cho-

colate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur

to dispense with one of these attendants on the

chocolate and hold his high place under the

admiring Heavens. Deep would have been

the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate

had been ignobly waited on by only three men;

he must have died of two.

The ruling class suffers from the ‘‘leprosy ofunreality,’’ engaging in inane, silly pursuits whileignoring the suffering of the poor and the pro-blems of their nation. Their disdain for the lowerclasses is epitomized by the Marquis’s actionsafter his coach, traveling through the Defarge’sneighborhood, runs over and kills one ofGaspard’s children. The Marquis literallythrows money at him and prepares to continueon his way. When Monsieur Defarge throws themoney back at him, the Marquis exclaims: ‘‘Youdogs. . . . I would ride over any of you very will-ingly, and exterminate you from the earth.’’ Aman ‘‘whiter than the miller,’’ looking like a‘‘spectre,’’ follows him home, hanging from achain behind the coach.

Darnay returns to France to visit his uncle,the Marquis. They have opposite political views:Darnay supports egalitarian, or democratic andclassless, principles. The Marquis believes inkeeping all power in the hands of the elite byany means necessary: ‘‘Repression is the onlylasting philosophy. The dark deference of fearand slavery . . .will keep the dogs obedient to thewhip.’’ Darnay laments the wrongs done by hisfamily, while his uncle claims it is their ‘‘naturaldestiny’’ to live that way. Darnay disagrees andrenounces his inheritance of theMarquis’s prop-erty and France itself. That night, Gaspard, thespecter earlier seen behind the carriage, kills theMarquis while he sleeps, leaving a note signed‘‘Jacques,’’ a very common name for Frenchmen, implying that Gaspard has killed in thename of the common people.

A year later, back in England, Darnay is aFrench teacher and fully in love with Lucie.He asks for Dr. Manette’s support and help inpursuing her. Dr. Manette agrees, so long asLucie loves him back. Meanwhile, Carton con-fesses his love directly to Lucie, but says that hewill not act upon it because he is incapable ofmaking her happy. He claims that she inspireshim to become a better man, but he lacks theenergy to act upon that inspiration. He promisesto ‘‘embrace any sacrifice’’ for her or for the onesthat she loves.

Back in Paris, the Defarges are secretlyworking to organize republicans into an effectivemovement (in which everyone uses the nameJacques) and to stir opposition to the governing



regime. Monsieur Defarge is anxious and wantsto speed the revolution on, butMadameDefargeis patient, waiting for the right moment in orderfor it to succeed. Meanwhile, she knits con-stantly, creating a register of all the wrongs com-mitted by the regime and of the names of those tobe killed once the revolution has succeeded.

They learn that a spy, Barsad (who earlierhad given false testimony in Darnay’s trial), is tobe stationed in their neighborhood. He comes tothe wine shop and tries to trickMadameDefargeinto saying something incriminating regardingthe execution of Gaspard, who was arrested forkilling the Marquis. She avoids the trap.However, Barsad does note that MonsieurDefarge is visibly troubled when he mentionsthat Lucie Manette is to marry Charles Darnay.

On the day of the marriage, Darnay revealshis real name to Dr.Manette—St. Evremonde—causing him great distress and pushing him backinto his trance-like state and obsessive shoemak-ing. He remains that way for nine more days,during which Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, Lucie’sservant, attend to him. After he emerges from hisstate with no memory of it, Mr. Lorry presentshis ‘‘case’’ to Dr. Manette for diagnosis, thusjogging his memory and leading to an apparentcure. After Darnay and Lucie return from theirhoneymoon, Carton pledges his friendship toDarnay, who reluctantly accepts it.

Several years later, Darnay and Lucie arethe parents of a six-year-old daughter and allseems to be going well for them. However, asense of foreboding hangs over them as theechoes of footsteps haunt them and, later, theyhear an ‘‘awful sound, as of a great storm inFrance with a dreadful sea rising.’’ In July1789, Mr. Lorry tells them of a growing uneasi-ness in France.

That same day, violence breaks out in Paris,with the Defarges, the Jacques, and an enormousmob storming the Bastille. After liberating theprisoners and killing the jailors, MonsieurDefarge heads to the cell that Dr. Manette hadoccupied and searches for something. After aweek of relative calm, the mob rises again, direc-ted by Monsieur Defarge, taking brutal revengeupon an aristocrat who had refused to help whenpeople were starving. As the mob spins out ofcontrol, Monsieur Defarge proclaims that therevolution has come at last, to which his wifereplies, ‘‘Almost.’’

The scene then shifts to the countryside,where the violence has spread as the hungry,desperate peasants rise up against the land own-ers and aristocrats, once again represented bythe character of Monseigneur. The chateauwhere the Marquis had lived is burned to theground, and this fire becomes a metaphor asrevolution quickly spreads across the country.This fire rages unabated for three years, andmuch of the French aristocracy flees the country,many of them to Britain. As they plot how toregain power, they, and their counterparts inBritain (including Mr. Stryver), refuse toacknowledge the causes of the revolution. Theytalk about it

as if it were the one only harvest ever known

under the skies that had not been sown—as if

nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be

done, that had led to it—as if observers of the

wretched millions in France, and of the mis-

used and perverted resources that should have

made them prosperous, had not seen it inevita-

bly coming.

In the midst of this intrigue, a letter arrivesat Tellson’s Bank, addressed to the heir of theMarquis St. Evremonde. The letter comes from aprisoner in Paris who appeals to the Marquis(now Darnay) to intervene on his behalf sincethe crimes with which he is charged resultedfrom his acting on behalf of theMarquis’s estate.Though no one but Dr. Manette knows of hisidentity, Darnay obtains the letter by chanceand, in the spirit of noblesse oblige—a feeling ofobligation to, and responsibility for, thosebeneath him—he immediately decides to departfor France. Believing he is innocent of anyresponsibility for the suffering of the poor,Darnay naively thinks that he can go and helpwithout endangering himself. Without tellinganyone, he leaves for Paris, as a

glorious vision of doing good, which is so often

the sanguine mirage of so many good minds,

arose before him, and he even saw himself in

the illusion with some influence to guide this

raging Revolution.

Book the Third: The Track of a StormOn his trip to Paris in August, Darnay learns of adecree condemning any returning aristocrats(‘‘emigrants’’) to death. He is arrested andescorted to Paris by Monsieur Defarge, wherehe is consigned to solitary confinement in LaForce prison. Even though he knows thatDarnay is married to the daughter of his com-rade, Dr. Manette, Defarge refuses to help him



or send a message on his behalf because, he says,‘‘my duty is to my country and the People.’’

In September, having learned of Darnay’simprisonment, Dr. Manette and Lucie come toParis to help him. Because of his own severemistreatment at the hands of the old regime,Dr. Manette has great influence on the revolu-tionaries whose plight he has shared. For severalweeks, Dr. Manette works tirelessly on Darnay’sbehalf. At the same time, episodes of madnessand butchery proliferate as La Guillotine killsrelentlessly. King Louis XVI is executed and theRepublic is declared as three hundred thousandmen rise up across France, like a ‘‘deluge risingfrom below, not falling from above,’’ as ‘‘theraging fever of a nation’’ runs rampant.

When Darnay’s trial begins, things look baduntil Dr.Manette stands up for him, swaying thejury. Darnay is set free and even celebrated bythe crowd who carries him home on their backs.However, the next day, Darnay is again arrested,having been denounced by Monsieur andMadame Defarge and Dr. Manette. When thedoctor denies this, it is revealed that a testamentwritten by him during his time in the Bastille hasbeen found by Monsieur Defarge.

The testament details the crimes of theMarquis St. Evremonde and his brother who,in 1757, raped a young woman and were respon-sible for the deaths of several peasants. The doc-tor was called to attend the woman and, repulsedby the action of these nobles, reported theircrimes. They had him imprisoned under a lettrede cachet—a blank warrant that allowed power-ful people to fill in the names of whomever theywished and have them imprisoned withouttrial—and for this and their other crimes, thedoctor condemned the brothers, and all theirdescendants. Persuaded again by the words ofDr. Manette, the jury—described as ‘‘a jury ofdogs empanelled to try the deer’’—unanimouslyconvicts Darnay and sentences him to death.Dr. Manette, horrified that he is responsible forDarnay’s death sentence, reverts to his tranceand his shoemaking.

However, Carton has arrived in Paris at thetime of the second arrest and is working behindthe scenes to free Darnay. He discovers thatBarsad is working as a spy in the prison andblackmails him to let Carton visit Darnay in hiscell. Carton, making use of his resemblance toDarnay, switches places with him, first drugginghim unconscious and then having Barsad take

him out of the prison in Carton’s clothes.Unbeknownst to the others, who are set toleave Paris just before the execution in casethere is further trouble for them, Darnayemerges from the prison instead of Carton, andthey speed away toward Britain and a happyreunion.

Meanwhile,MadameDefarge, who happensto be the sister of one of the peasants murderedby the St. Evremondes, has plotted to have thewhole lot of them arrested as part of her ownrevenge on the Marquis’s descendants. Shearrives at their house after they have left butencounters Miss Pross, who fights with her.Madame Defarge dies accidentally by her ownhand when her gun goes off. As the Darnays andMr. Lorry travel to London, Carton is executedin Paris, uttering another of the most famouslines in literature before he dies: ‘‘It is a far, farbetter thing that I do, than I have ever done; it isa far, far better rest that I go to, than I have everknown.’’

THEMES

Revolution and RevoltIn A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens conveys anambivalent attitude toward the French Revolu-tion. While it is clear from the beginning that hesympathizes with the French people, who areneglected and abused by the elite, it is equallyclear by the end of his novel that he does not seethe revolution as a success. Instead, he presents avicious circle of history in which the oppressorbecomes the oppressed, and vice versa, with nodeeper change occurring that could be describedas real progress.

Dickens knows quite clearly, however, thecauses of the French Revolution, and he pre-sents it, in many ways, as inevitable given theexisting conditions. He repeatedly uses meta-phors of nature—storms, earthquakes, fires,etc.—to describe the coming revolution. Heestablishes parallels between Britain andFrance early in the book and emphasizes themagain later, after the revolution has begun,when the aristocracy still fails to understandtheir responsibility in creating the conditionsthat led to mass revolt. Dickens directly warnsthat, so long as the ruling class refuses to takeresponsibility for the way that they govern, theyare destined to be violently overthrown:



It was too much the way ofMonseigneur under

his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too

much the way of native British orthodoxy, to

talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the

one only harvest . . . that had not been sown.

However, Dickens was always a reformer atheart, not a revolutionary. He does not ulti-mately present the FrenchRevolution as a neces-sary, inevitable step toward freedom anddemocracy. Instead, he sees it as an understand-able, though ultimately tragic, response to thefailure of the ruling class to enact sufficientreforms that would improve the lives of the peo-ple and remove the motives for revolution. Heconcludes the book on a somewhat optimistic,hopeful note, not only with Carton’s individualsacrifice for the greater good and an image ofreconciliation as he embraces the seamstress onthe way to the guillotine, but directly throughCarton’s thoughts as well:

I see . . . long ranks of the new oppressors who

have risen on the destruction of the old, perish-

ing by this retributive instrument, before it

shall cease out of its present use. I see a beauti-

ful city and a brilliant people rising from this

abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in

their triumphs and defeats, through long, long

years to come, I see the evil of this time and of

the previous time of which this is the natural

birth, gradually making expiation for itself and

wearing out.

In the end, Dickens envisions a better futurefor the common people, not because of the revo-lution, but in spite of it, as the people graduallyexperience the kind of real change of heart (asCarton does) that is needed to spur progressivereforms.

Violence and BrutalityOne thing is absolutely clear: though he may beguardedly optimistic about the possibilities forgenuine change, Dickens is mortified by the useof violence and does not see it as the means toaccomplish the changes that he desires. ThoughDickens advocated for social reform throughouthis professional life, he never believed that aviolent revolution was a viable option. Indeed,one of the prime motives for his pursuit ofreform was to prevent violent uprisings fromhappening in the first place.

The horror and outrage that Dickensexpresses at the conditions experienced by thepoor in both France and Britain is matched,and perhaps even exceeded, by the revulsionwith which he regards the bloodiness and

brutality of the uprisings. We see this not onlyin his description of the storming of the Bastilleand the slaughter of the jailors, with their headsraised on pikes, but in the gory details withwhich he describes, at length, the attack on thearistocrat, Foulon.

For Dickens, all of this violence is just arepetition of the conditions before the revolu-tion; only the perpetrators have changed. Whatis lost in the frenzy of class war and revenge is thepossibility of truly changing the conditions andimproving people’s lives. One group’s violenceand oppression of another, no matter how realthe grievances motivating it, is neither better,nor more justified, than any other.

Ultimately, Dickens seems to imply, onlythrough private virtue rather than class war canchange for the better occur. It is only through anindividual’s heroic sacrifice for the greater good,like Carton’s—and not the self-interested andvengeful motives of a Madame Defarge—thatsocial reform and justice can possibly beachieved. And though he ends the book on asomewhat optimistic note, it is also a very cau-tionary one, directed at his countrymen, warningof the potential violence awaiting it if the gov-ernment does not enact necessary reforms.

Women and WarWomen played a central role in the uprisingsthat led to the French Revolution. Through thecharacters of Madame Defarge and TheVengeance, a fellow female revolutionary,Dickens rightly includes women at the center ofthe story. However, his depiction of thesewomen as aggressive, menacing Furies, whocoldly calculate murder and revenge, takes theirrepresentation beyond the limits of social rea-lism. Instead, as in many other Dickensnovels—perhaps most famously with MissHavisham in Great Expectations—female char-acters tend to be associated with murder anddeath.

In A Tale of Two Cities, these women arenot merely associated with death, but are agentsof it. In battle, ‘‘the women were a sight to chillthe boldest.’’ They are threatening, cold, merci-less, and intimidating, even pathologically com-pelled to seek revenge. And, tellingly, thispursuit of revenge has personal, emotionalroots, as Madame Defarge ultimately seeks toavenge the murder of her brother by theSt. Evremondes. It was very common at the



time Dickens wrote the book to relegate female

characters to the private sphere of personal and

emotional relationships rather than the tradi-

tionally masculine public sphere of rational rea-

soning and political decision. In A Tale of Two

Cities, the factual and political reasons for the

revolution are always discussed in an authori-

tative male voice, whether character or narra-

tor. On the other hand, violence and inevitable

death in the story are often associated with

women and their bloodthirsty desire for

revenge. Further, the novel contains hints that

Madame Defarge’s motives are tainted by cal-

culated self-interest rather than the selflessness

implied in the motives ofMonsieur Defarge and

the Jacques.

Despite his inclusion of female revolution-aries, Dickens does not present them in the same

vein that he does their male counterparts.

Ultimately, he seems to imply that it is women’s

impulse for vengeance that exacerbates, or

makes worse, the conflict, preventing calmer,

more rational heads from prevailing and ending

the bloodshed.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The French RevolutionA variety of issues contributed to the FrenchRevolution of 1789–99. There was widespreaddiscontent in France with the privilege enjoyedby the nobility, land owners, and the Churchthat excluded the lower and middle classesfrom improving their situation. Peasants andwage earners suffered greatly under a system ofland ownership that left them exploited andpowerless, particularly under the heavy burdenof taxation they bore to pay for the privilegesand extravagances of the aristocracy. At thesame time, Enlightenment philosophy cham-pioning the liberty and rights of individualsbecame popular and generated hope for change,particularly in the wake of the success of theAmerican Revolution. On top of all this, a foodshortage occurred, leading to widespreaddesperation.

In the late 1780s, with their problems unad-dressed by King Louis XVI, the people began torebel. To appease them, the king called for theelection of a parliamentary body, which met in

French troops storming the Bastille during the French Revolution Archive Photos/Getty Images



1789. Instead of obeying the will of the King, theelected body declared itself to be the rulingauthority and vowed to write a constitution.Violence erupted across France as peasantsattacked the ruling classes, leading to the aboli-tion of the feudal system and the nobility’sacceptance of the Declaration of the Rights ofMan. In 1791, the powers of the monarch werelimited by law, but by then revolutionary fervorhad taken grip. Revolutionaries fought underthe motto, Liberte, egalite, fraternite, ou lamort! (Liberty, equality, brotherhood ordeath!). The monarchy was abolished altogetherin 1792, and King Louis XVI was executed fortreason.

Rather than a democratic government beingestablished, a dictatorship was formed thatimposed order by killing its potential opponents,particularly land owners and aristocrats. Duringthis Reign of Terror (1793–94), over twenty-eight hundred people were guillotined in Parisalone. Dickens’s horror at such brutality, espe-cially since the violence was committed by thosewho had themselves been brutalized by the rul-ing class they overthrew, is at the heart of hisnovel.

The Industrial Revolution and VictorianBritainFrom 1750–1850, Britain underwent an enor-mous cultural upheaval. Technological changes,such as the development of steam power andadvances in the textile industry, combined withthe rapid growth of overseas markets for trade,led to a major population shift from rural areasto the cities. At the same time, workers had veryfew rights or protections and were at the mercyof their employers. Hours were long (up to six-teen hours per day, six days per week), condi-tions were dangerous, wages were low, and alarge portion of the workforce were children,who often experienced even worse conditionsthan adults.

In 1832, the Reform Bill was passed, whichexpanded voting rights to property-owningmales but did little to address the needs anddemands of the working class. In the 1840s,economic conditions declined, leading to wide-spread unemployment and even some localizedriots. When conditions did not improve in the1850s, Dickens and many others began to noteparallels with the period leading up to theFrench Revolution.

The 1848 RevolutionsIn January 1848, a rebellion broke out in Sicilyand the people succeeded in imposing a consti-tution on their king. Soon after, similar rebel-lions broke out in Piedmont and Milan (in thenorth of what is now Italy), then quickly spreadthroughout Europe, to Austria, Germany,Poland, and France, as populations rose upagainst the rule of absolute monarchs and theiroften-corrupt appointed governors. In someplaces, constitutional monarchies were estab-lished. In other places, such as France, monarchswere forced to flee as their people attempted toestablish republics governed by the people ratherthan a king.

While these uprisings did not make it acrossthe English Channel, they came very close. Notonly did Britain have its own popular move-ment, the Chartists, pushing for democraticreforms, it was also swamped by a large numberof desperately poor Irish immigrants fleeing thepotato famine. The combination of these forcesput great pressure on the British government toaddress the needs of its people. Through a policyof gradual reform, the government was able toavert the sort of mass uprisings that occurred onthe continent.

Dickens was keenly aware of the potentialfor revolt in Britain. Indeed, he had been one ofthe leading advocates of reform in order to pre-vent violent uprisings. But after the events of1848, he began to despair that reform wouldnot be enough, especially since little progresshad been made by the late 1850s. As quoted inMichael Goldberg’s article ‘‘Carlyle, Dickens,and the Revolution of 1848,’’ Edgar Johnsonrecounts that in the 1850s, Dickens noted thesimilarities between the ‘‘sullen, smouldering dis-content’’ in England and the ‘‘general mind ofFrance before the . . .Revolution,’’ worrying thatthe slightest incident might trigger a violentexplosion. Dickens’s conflicted feelings of sym-pathy for the downtrodden poor but fear of theviolence of revolution permeates A Tale of TwoCities.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

Because A Tale of Two Cities differs so greatlyfrom Dickens’s other works, it has received amixed reaction from critics. While it remainsone of the most popular and widely read of



Dickens’s works with the general public, A Taleof Two Cities is one of the least popular among

Dickens fans and scholars of his work. It is fre-quently omitted from works on Dickens in gen-eral, and when it is discussed, it is often brieflydismissed as atypical and thus uninteresting orunimportant. Some critics, however, have foundin the most unique element of the novel—itstreatment of a specific historical event—anissue of great interest, precisely because it standsapart from the rest of Dickens’s novels.

WhileATale of TwoCitieswas popularwhenit was first published in 1859, the critical responsewas not so positive. Although some critics wereenthusiastic—John Forster, in a review for theExaminer, praised the ‘‘author’s genius’’ and the‘‘subtlety with which a private history is asso-ciated with a most vivid expression of the spiritof the days of the great French Revolution’’—most were very critical. Reactions tended to be

polarized, with few critics expressing mixed

feelings. Some writers of the time considered itthe best of Dickens’s novels, but the vast majority

of them condemned it as flawed, inferior, andeven immoral. As Ruth Glancy notes in ‘‘A Taleof Two Cities’’: Dickens’s Revolutionary Novel,‘‘Most of the critics writing in the intellectualand literary journals of the day considered popu-lar success a good reason to condemn a work,’’and many criticized it simply because it appealedto the masses.

Not all the criticism was directed at thebook’s popularity, though. Many critics weredissatisfied by more substantive aspects of thebook, such as its lack of humor, lack of memor-able and entertaining characters, the implausi-bility of the plot, or the melodramatic andsentimental tone of many episodes. Sir JamesFitzjames Stephen, in a famous review writtenfor the Saturday Review in 1859, combines criti-cism of the book’s mass appeal with outrage at

its lack of artistic quality. He claims that

Elizabeth Allan as Lucie Manette and Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton in the 1935 film version of ATale of Two Cities ª Bettmann/Corbis



thebook appeals to the common reader’s feelingsonly through the ‘‘coarsest stimulants’’ and thatDickens’s technique is ‘‘the very lowest of lowstyles of art’’; he concludes that it would be ‘‘hardto imagine a clumsier andmore disjointed frame-work for the display of the tawdry wares whichform Mr. Dickens’s stock-in-trade.’’

Modern critical opinion, however, puts ATale of Two Cities in the category of Dickens’sbest works, particularly for its complex thematicissues and the ambivalence with which he treatsthe French Revolution. Early in the twentiethcentury, it began to receive more positiveresponses from critics. One reason for this shiftis the emphasis placed on the character ofSydney Carton rather than the historical eventsin the book, due, in part, to the wildly successful1899 stage version of the book, The Only Way,which puts Carton, the romantic hero who sacri-fices his life so that others may be happy, at the

center of attention. With the theme of sacrificefor the greater good brought to the fore, criticsbegan to explore a range of other thematic issuesrather than emphasize stylistic and aesthetic con-cerns. The themes of doubling, or a charactersaying what he or she believes another characterto be thinking, and resurrection, in particular,receive much attention, especially from psycho-logical critics.

However, while thematic issues dominatethe criticism of the last hundred years, analysesof the historical events depicted in the novel havealso been prominent. George Orwell, in his land-mark work onDickens in the bookDickens, Dali& Others, notes the tension expressed in A Taleof Two Cities between Dickens’s sympathy forthe terribly mistreated poor and his horror attheir own mistreatment of the aristocracy oncethey gain power. Others, such as J.M. Rignall, in‘‘Dickens and the Catastrophic Continuum of

MEDIAADAPTATIONS

A Tale of Two Cities has been adapted to filmand television a number of times, beginning in1911 with the Vitagraph Films silent version,directed by William Humphrey and starringMaurice Costello and Florence Turner.

The 1935 production of A Tale of TwoCities, produced by David O. Selznick forMGM Studios, directed by Jack Conway, andstarring Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton, inperhaps the most memorable role of his career, isconsidered one of the great film classics. It isavailable on Warner Home Video.

The 1958 British version of A Tale of TwoCities, directed by Ralph Thomas for RankOrganization Film Productions and starringDick Bogarde as Carton, is a faithful retellingof Dickens’s novel, although the scenes from theFrench Revolution are perhaps not as dramaticand compelling as the 1935 MGM adaptation.Though available on video, this film can be hardto find.

In 1980, A Tale of Two Cities was adaptedfor television by Artisan Entertainment for the

Hallmark Hall of Fame movie series on CBS.

Directed by Jim Goddard and starring Chris

Sarandon as Carton, this version takes some

liberties with the plot of the novel but is rela-

tively faithful to the spirit and themes of the

book. It is available on video.

In 1989, an excellent Anglo-French mini-series version of A Tale of Two Cities, starring

James Wilby and John Mills, was directed by

Philippe Monnier for British television and

later shown in the United States on PBS’s

Masterpiece Theatre. This version is very faith-

ful to the plot and pays great attention to realis-

tic details of costume, setting, and language, and

French actors play the French roles. It is avail-

able on video and DVD from Granada

Television.

There are a variety of unabridged audio ver-sions of A Tale of Two Cities. It is available in

cassette, CD, and MP-3 formats from Audio

Editions.

A free, unabridged ebook version ofATale ofTwo Cities, in plain text format, is available online

at www.gutenberg.org/etext/98 from Project

Gutenberg.



History in A Tale of Two Cities,’’ have taken thisobservation one step further, seeing in Dickens’snovel a grim view of history in which the FrenchRevolution is just one event in a greater cycle ofhistorical violence, one from which it is impos-sible to escape. But regardless of whether criticssee Dickens as commenting specifically on theFrench Revolution or on general historical pro-cesses, or whether they focus on themes or on thedepiction of historical events, the question ofhow Dickens views the possibility of change ismost prominent in modern criticism.

CRITICISM

Robert AlterIn the following excerpt, Alter notes how Dickensexplores the relationship between evil and historyin the perpetuation of cycles of violence. He arguesthat the novel, through its use of allegory, is lessabout a specific historical moment than a medita-tion on the impersonal forces (primarily destruc-tive) that determine history as they work throughindividuals.

WhatDickens is ultimately concernedwith inA Tale of Two Cities is not a particular historicalevent—that is simply his chosen dramatic set-ting—but rather the relationship between historyand evil, how violent oppression breeds violentrebellion which becomes a new kind of oppres-sion. His account of the ancien regime and theFrench Revolution is a study in civilized man’svocation for proliferatingmoral chaos, and in thisone important regard the Tale is the most com-pellingly ‘‘modern’’ of his novels. He also trieshard, through the selfless devotion of his moreexemplary characters, to suggest something ofmankind’s potential for moral regeneration; buthe is considerably less convincing in this effort,partly because history itself offers so little evidencethat the imagination of hope can use to sustainitself.

The most powerful imaginings of the novelreach out again and again to touch ultimatepossibilities of violence, whether in the tidalwaves of mass destruction or in the hideousinventiveness of individual acts of cruelty. Inthe first chapter we are introduced to Francethrough the detailed description of an executionby horrible mutilation, and to England by arapid series of images of murder, mob violence,

and hangings. Throughout the novel, theEnglish mob is in potential what the Frenchrevolutionary hordes are in bloody fact. At theEnglish trial of the falsely accused Darnay, the‘‘ogreish’’ spectators, eagerly awaiting the con-demnation, vie with one another in their lip-smacking description of how a man looks beingdrawn and quartered. Again in France, thedetails of torture and savagery exercise anobscene fascination over the imagination of thecharacters (and perhaps of the writer as well)—nightmarish images of tongues torn out withpincers, gradual dismemberment, boiling oiland lead poured into gaping wounds, floatthrough the darkness of the novel and linger onthe retina of the memory.

The energy of destruction that gathers tosuch acts of concentrated horror pulses throughthe whole world of the novel, pounding at itsfoundations. It is conceived as an elementalforce in nature that works through men as well.Dover Beach as Jarvis Lorry contemplates itnear the beginning of the novel is a replica innature of the revolution to come, the scene moststrikingly serving as event: ‘‘The sea did what itliked, and what it liked was destruction. It thun-dered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs,and brought the coast down madly.’’ The imageof the revolutionary mob, much later in thenovel, is simply the obverse of this vision of theocean as chaos and darkness: ‘‘The sea of blackand threatening waters, and of destructiveupheaving of wave against wave, whose depthswere yet unfathomed and whose forces were yetunknown. The remorseless sea of turbulentlyswaying shapes, voices of vengeance.’’ Thesesame pitiless forces are present in the rainstormthat descends upon the quiet Soho home of theManettes as Lucie, Darnay, and Carton watch:the lightning, harbinger of revolution, that theysee leaping from the stormy dark is the only lightthat can be born from the murky atmosphere ofthis world—the hot light of destruction. Laterthe revolution is also likened to a great earth-quake, and when Madame Defarge adds to thisher grim declaration—‘‘Tell wind and fire whereto stop . . . but don’t tell me’’—all four elementsof the traditional world-picture have been asso-ciated with the forces of blind destruction, earthand water and fire and air.

There is, ultimately, a peculiar impersonal-ity about this novel, for it is intended to drama-tize the ways in which human beings become the



slaves of impersonal forces, at last are madeinhuman by them. In order to show the play ofthese elemental forces in history, Dickens adoptsa generalizing novelistic technique that fre-quently approaches allegory, the mode of imagi-nation traditionally used for the representationof cosmic powers doing battle or carrying out adestined plan. The Darkness and Light of thenovel’s first sentence are almost immediatelysupported by the introduction of two explicitlyallegorical figures in the same chapter; theWoodman, Fate; and the Farmer, Death. Inthe action that follows, events and charactersoften assume the symbolic postures and formalmasks of allegory.

The man seen clinging to the chains of theMarquis’s carriage, ‘‘all covered with dust, whiteas a spectre, tall as a spectre,’’ is no longer theflesh-and-blood father of the child murdered bytheMarquis but has become a ghastly Messenger,sent to exact vengeance from the nobleman. TheMarquis himself, always seen from an immensedistance of implacable irony, is far more an alle-gorical representation of the French ruling classesthan an individual character. The elaborate figureused to describe the Marquis’s death—a new facestruck to stone by the Gorgon’s head—is entirelyappropriate, for his death is not a ‘‘realistic’’ mur-der but the symbolic acting out of the inexorableworkings of retribution. In this novel, it is fittingthat one Frenchwoman should actually be called‘‘The Vengeance’’; the narrator at the end willironically bid her by name to shout aloud after aThereseDefargewho is forever beyond answering.It is equally fitting that Charles Darnay’s Frenchname, Evremonde, should sound like an Englishname of a different sort: he is the Everymanwho isdrawn to the heart of destruction and virtuallygives up his life there, in legal fact and physicalappearance, to be reborn only through the expia-tory death of another self, and so to return to hisbeloved, whose name means ‘‘light.’’

The essence of history, at least when weview it retrospectively, is inevitability, for his-tory above all else the record of what hasalready happened, which, because it has alreadyhappened, must forever be as it is and not other-wise. By dramatically translating this notion ofinevitability into the irreversible progress ofviolence in the life of a nation, Dickens, who isusually anything but an austere writer, givesthis novel a kind of oblique reflection of thestern grandeur of the Greek tragedies, where

inexorable fate works itself out throughhuman lives. ‘‘At last it is come,’’ Defargedeclares to his wife as the Revolution begins,the affirmation of an eternally destined decreeringing through his words. It is as though a lawof moral physics were operating with mathema-tical certainty in the events of history: ‘‘Crushhumanity out of shape once more, under similarhammers, and it will twist itself into the sametortured forms.’’

Source: Robert Alter, ‘‘The Demons of History in

Dickens’s Tale,’’ in Motives for Fiction, Harvard

University Press, 1984, pp. 104–113

SOURCES

Dickens, Charles, A Tale of Two Cities, Pocket Books,

2004.

Forster, John, Review of A Tale of Two Cities, in

Dickens: The Critical Heritage, edited by Philip Collins,

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971, p. 424; originally pub-

lished in the Examiner, December 10, 1859.

Glancy, Ruth, ‘‘A Tale of Two Cities’’: Dickens’s

Revolutionary Novel, Twayne Publishers, 1991, p. 11.

Goldberg, Michael, ‘‘Carlyle, Dickens, and the

Revolution of 1848,’’ in Critical Essays on Charles

Dickens’s ‘‘A Tale of Two Cities’’, edited by Michael A.

Cotsell, G. K. Hall and Co., 1998, p. 155; originally

published in Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 12, 1983.

Marcus, David D., ‘‘The Carlylean Vision of A Tale of

Two Cities,’’ in Charles Dickens’s ‘‘A Tale of Two Cities’’,

edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers,

1987, p. 27; originally published in Studies in the Novel,

Vol. 8, No. 1, 1976.

Orwell, George, ‘‘Charles Dickens,’’ in Dickens, Dali &

Others, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1946, p. 16.

Rance, Nicholas, ‘‘Charles Dickens’sATale of TwoCities

(1859),’’ inCritical Essays on Charles Dickens’s ‘‘A Tale of

Two Cities’’, edited byMichael A. Cotsell, G. K. Hall and

Co., 1998, p. 83.

Rignall, J. M., ‘‘Dickens and the Catastrophic

Continuum of History in A Tale of Two Cities, in

Critical Essays on Charles Dickens’s ‘‘A Tale of Two

Cities’’, edited by Michael A. Cotsell, G. K. Hall and

Co., 1998, p. 157; originally published in English

Literary History, Vol. 58, No. 3, 1984.

Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames, ‘‘A Tale of Two Cities,’’ in

The Dickens Critics, edited by George H. Ford and

Lauriat Lane, Jr., Cornell University Press, 1961, pp.

40–41, 43; originally published in the Saturday Review,

December 17, 1859.



Documents

A Tale of Two Cities - Homepage | Williamsburg-James City ... · A Tale of Two Cities ... tale for his own nation, a warning that, if genu- ... detail as places of disorder and injustice