BEGC-110

BRITISH LITERATURE:
Indira Gandhi National Open University 19TH CENTURY
School of Humanities

Block

1
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Block Introduction 7
UNIT 1
Introduction: A Tale of Two Cities 9
UNIT 2
Summary and Analysis 18
UNIT 3
The French Revolution and Dickens 35
UNIT 4
Other Aspects of the Novel 47

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 EXPERTS COMMITTEE
Prof Ameena Kazi Ansari Prof. Malati Mathur
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi Director, School of Humanities
Dr Anand Prakash
(Retd.) Hansraj College (DU), IGNOU (ENGLISH FACULTY)
New Delhi Prof. Neera Singh
Dr Hema Raghavan Prof. Nandini Sahu
(Retd.) Principal, Gargi College (DU), Prof. Parmod Kumar
New Delhi Dr. Pema Eden Samdup
Dr Nupur Samuel Ms. Mridula Rashmi Kindo
Ambedkar University, New Delhi Dr. Malathy A
Dr Ruchi Kaushik
SRCC (DU), New Delhi
Dr Ipshita Hajra Sasmal
Ambedkar University, New Delhi
Dr Cheryl R Jacob
Ambedkar University, New Delhi
Dr. Chhaya Sawhney
Gargi College, DU, New Delhi
Dr. Vandita Gautam
Motilal Nehru College (DU), Delhi
Dr. Chinganbam Anupama
Kalindi College (DU), New Delhi
Prof. Ramesh Menon
Symbiosis Institute of Management and Communication, Pune

COORDINATION AND EDITING

Prof. Neera Singh
School of Humanities
IGNOU

COURSE PREPARATION
This course has been adapted from existing IGNOU material

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June, 2021
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 BRITISH LITERATURE: 19TH CENTURY
(BEGC110) COURSE INTRODUCTION
WELCOME STUDENTS!!
The Victorian age in English literature takes its name from Queen Victoria
of Great Britain who ascended the throne in 1837, and was monarch until
her death in 1901. However, when we talk of the Victorian Age, we have
the period of 1830-1900 in mind. Hence, 1830 marks the beginning of the
Victorian period in English literature.
The economic and political measures introduced by Queen Victoria, like
ending the monopoly of merchants ( the old laissez-faire policy), her fair
and liberal steps in dealing with the British colonies, along with the progress
made in the fields of commerce and industry made the Victorian age one
of the best ages for the English people. However, there was a flip side to
this scenario. The industrial progress brought in its wake, poverty, ugliness,
squalor and injustice among the urban industrial workers. The worst crisis
occurred in the realm of religion. So far, the advances of contemporary
Science had not disturbed the Victorian mind. But the publication of Charles
Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830) and Charles Darwin’s The Origin of
Species (1859), shook the very foundations of Christianity. Darwin’s theory
of Natural Selection came in direct conflict with the Book of Genesis. This
led to a spiritual crisis among the Victorians. It is important also to consider
the position of women in the 19th century. There were several repressive
forces constantly operating on women in the Victorian period. Women
were not supposed to be opinionated. They were conventionally required to
simply conform to the male line of thought. But on the other hand, again,
a number of legislations enacted during the period also gave the right to
divorce and inheritance to women.
To sum it up, the Victorian period symbolizes prosperity and progress on the
one hand, and poverty and gloomy forebodings on the other; moralism and
philanthropy on the one hand, and capitalistic greed and corruption on the
other ; peace and contentment on the one hand, and an undercurrent of ‘sick
hurry and divided aims’, on the other. This social divide in society, often
referred to as ‘Victorian Compromise’, came to be observed in the novels
of Charles Dickens, W. M. Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, George Meredith,
Emily and Anne Bronte, Thomas Hardy and Mary Ann Evans ( who wrote
under the pseudonym George Eliot).
In Block 1 of this course we will be taking up Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale
of Two Cities.
In Block 2 you will be studying another novel The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas hardy.
Blocks 3 and 4 deal with Victorian Poetry.
Two of the most important novelists of this period were Dickens and Hardy.
Dickens was a recorder of the Victorian age, both celebrating and criticizing
it. His novel A Tale of Two Cities opens with the lines-“ It was the best of
times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age

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 of foolishness,…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”-
which though speak of an earlier time (around the time of the French
revolution of 1789) yet, Dickens writes from the historical perspective of
his own times which saw a similar social and economic disparity.
The Mayor of Casterbridge is one of Hardy’s famous ‘Wessex’ novels. It
is set in the fictional town of Casterbridge which is Dorchester situated in
the south-western region of England popularized by Hardy as ‘ Wessex’
in his novels. It is possible to find elements of Greek tragedy in the novel
and certain features that allow us to read the novel as psychological, social,
historical and regional. The distinctive quality of Hardy’s novels is that you
can respond to them in all these different ways.
The great Victorian poets are undisputedly Tennyson, Browning and
Matthew Arnold and each in his own way was influenced by the masters of
the Romantic age. Early Tennyson was powerfully under the influence of
Keats, in certain respects even excelling him. While Tennyson’s first poems
were Keatsian, Browning wrote the early poems under the spell of Shelley.
Later, however, in breadth of vision, in its wider sympathies, in its greatest
awareness of the social changes, Browning’s poetry far outstrips the poetry
of the Romantic poets. In his manipulation of the dramatic monologue,
Browning has hardly anyone to match him. Matthew Arnold presents a
much sober picture as compared to Tennyson. He, with his sympathy for the
classical masters, could not love the more fiery ones among the Romantics.
His ideal was Wordsworth.
Christina Georgina Rossetti (pseudonym Ellen Alleyne) was one of the
most important 19th century English women poets both in range and quality.
Haunted by an ideal of spiritual purity that demanded self- denial, Christina
still had a passionate and sensuous temperament, a keen critical perception
and a lively sense of humor. ‘Goblin Market’ is her best known poem and
the two sisters in the poem, may be taken to represent the two sides of the
poetess herself− self-denying and ascetic, and the other sensuous, hedonistic
and self-indulgent.
G. M. Hopkins lived and wrote during the latter half of the Victorian period
but his poetry was published only in 1918, posthumously. He is considered
to be a herald of modernist poetry because of his daring innovations and
experimentations in poetic language, technique and style. Subject wise,
he is predominantly the product of his times. He praises the beauty and
grandeur of God’s creation, explores his spiritual tensions and investigates
his relationship with God.
I hope you will enjoy studying this course as much as we enjoyed putting
it together.

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 A TALE OF TWO CITIES: BLOCK INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the first Block of your course on British Literature: 19th Century
(BEGC-110).
Block 1 is devoted to the novel, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
In Unit 1 we have provided you with a general introduction to the novel as
well as introduced Dickens and his other works.
In Unit 2 we have given you a detailed summary of A Tale of Two Cities
along with critical comments to help you understand the events of the novels.
In Unit 3 we have discussed the French Revolution as an actual historical
event and we have also focused on Dickens’ treatment of the French
Revolution.
In Unit 4 we have taken up some other important aspects of the novel which
are important for you to understand.
We expect you to read the complete novel, as only then will you find our
discussions meaningful.
All the best.

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 UNIT 1  INTRODUCTION: A TALE OF
TWO CITIES
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Charles Dickens: Life and Works
1.3 A Tale of Two Cities: Background
1.4 A Tale of Two Cities in Relation to Dickens' Other Works
1.4.1 Dickens' Portrayal of Women
1.4.2 Theme of Burial and Resurrection
1.4.3 Dickens and the Revolution
1.4.4 A Tale of Two Cities and Dickens' Later Novels
1.5 Let Us Sum Up
1.6 Glossary
1.7 Answers to Check Your Progress

1.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit, the material provided is chiefly of an introductory nature. Our
aim through this Unit is to:
●● place the text within the context of the writer's life, the times in which
he lived, his other works, his other interests, and his major thematic
preoccupations, as no text exists in isolation from its context.
●● provide some knowledge of the French revolution, which was an
actual historical event that Dickens used as background material for
his novel.
●● touch briefly on some features of the novel.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Let us begin by getting acquainted with the novel A Tale of Two Cities.
A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books/parts. Book I begins
with a chapter that specifies the historical period in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century, and the settings (England and France), of the novel.
The narrative begins with the dangerous journey of Mr. Jarvis Lorry, an
English banker, from England to Paris, accompanied by a young girl, Lucie
Manette. In Paris they meet her father whom she has never seen before:
Dr. Edward Manette, a prisoner of the Bastille now released after eighteen
years of solitary confinement. He was kept hidden in a loft over the wine-
shop of the Defarges. Manette is withdrawn and confused, and clings to
his cobbler's bench and tools, which had given him solace in prison. He is
gently persuaded to return to England with them.

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 A Tale of Two Cities Book II is given the title “The Golden Thread”. (You will have to consider
whether this title is an appropriate one). The events narrated in this section
cover a period of approximately nine years. The narrative begins at a point
five years after the release of Dr. Manette, and ends with the onset of the
Revolution and Charles Darnay's return to France soon after. The greater
part of the twenty-four chapters in this section is set in London and centres
around the residence of Dr. Manette in the Soho district. These chapters tell
us of Dr. Manette's slow recovery, Lucie Manette's courtship by three men,
her acceptance of Charles Darnay, and the happiness of this tranquil family
set-up. But this account is interrupted every now and then by chapters
set in France which remind us of the growing discontent of the poor and
the threat of revolution in that country. These chapters tell us of the sins
of the aristocracy, especially of the attitude and actions of the Marquis
d'Evremonde (uncle of Charles Darnay), his murder, and the consequences
of the act. Thus Book II both provides a contrast between the "home" (set
in England), and the “nation” (the events in France), as well as shows us
the interconnectedness of the two. Dickens wishes to convey a sense of
inexorability or doom in the progress of events in both the stories.
Book III is set entirely in revolutionary France, and gives us vivid and
entirely negative pictures of the French mob, such as their frenzied dances,
their travestied trials, their bloodthirsty killings, their spying and plotting,
and their avid enjoyment of the spectacle of the guillotine. In Book III,
Dickens reinforces the pattern of violence and counter-violence, turning
them into an almost autonomous process as if destined by some impersonal
Fate rather than by human agents. We also note how Dickens resolves
the triangular love-plot by arranging the sacrificial death of Carton, at the
guillotine. The novel ends with his optimistic vision of the future, and his
famous words of farewell.

1.2 CHARLES DICKENS: LIFE AND WORKS

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 at Portsea, England. His father was a
naval pay clerk who was improvident and frequently in debt. When Dickens
was eleven, family circumstances forced him to leave school and find
employment in a blacking factory. His father was sent to the debtors' prison
in Marshalsea. These were happenings that left a deep scar in his mind. He
never forgot the humiliation of sinking into the working - class so suddenly,
or the betrayal at being left to fend for himself. The deep sympathy of the
child, and the protest against social injustices that we find in his work were
born out of his childhood trauma.
After a few months, however, John Dickens was released and the young
Charles was able to resume schooling. He started work in a law firm as clerk,
became a legal reporter, and subsequently, due to his skill in shorthand, a
newspaper reporter of parliamentary proceedings. As a journalist he wrote
a number of short descriptive "sketches" of city life, which were so popular
that they were collected into a book, entitled Sketches by Boz (1843). (Boz
was the pen name adopted by Dickens). His first novel was the immensely
popular comic novel Pickwick Papers. It was originally intended to serve
merely as the text to accompany the sporting plates of the famous artist

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 Seymour, but due to the former's death, Dickens went on to write it as his Introduction: A Tale of
own book. Two Cities

Dickens’ success as a novelist after this was swift. He wrote Oliver Twist, The
Old Curiosity Shop, and Nicholas Nickleby almost simultaneously between
1837 and 1841. In these early novels Dickens attacked various contemporary
social evils and called for their reform. Barnaby Rudge (1841), which came
next, was one of his only two historical novels (the other being the much
later A Tale of Two Cities). In 1842 he visited America with his wife (he had
married Catherine Hogarth in 1836). American Notes (1848) was based on
this visit. The novels of his "middle" period were Martin Chuzzlewit (1844),
The Christmas books including Christmas Carol (1843), Dombey and Sons
(1848), and the autobiographical David Copperfield (1850).
Dickens' greatest novels were written, arguably, in the decade that followed:
Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), and Little Dorrit (1857) are, like his
last novels, Great Expectations (1861) and Our Mutual Friend (1865), great
novels of social criticism. In these novels, Dickens is no longer attacking
specific social ills, but is dealing with the issue of the "condition of England"
itself through his satiric representation of such national institutions as the
court of Chancery, the "Circumlocution Office", the factory system, the
class system, the great financial schemes and money systems, and middle-
class philistinism and jingoism.
In 1859 he wrote A Tale of Two Cities, going back to the eighteenth century
for his matter. In the 1850s Dickens was also editor successively of two
immensely successful magazines. He was at the height of his success, and
had become a man of great wealth and fame. In 1858 he began to give
public readings from his books, which were very popular. But they proved
to be a great physical strain, and he died following a stroke in 1870. He was
buried in Westminster Abbey in the Poets' Corner, an honour reserved for
the great English writers.
Dickens is the author of fourteen novels and numerous other works. His
work is marked by extreme energy and virtuosity, whether he is being
satirical, humorous, sentimental, or polemical. Dickens’ popularity and
literary greatness are not at odds with one another−he remains one of the
few widely read "classics."
Check Your Progress 1
i) Which event in his life affected Dickens greatly?
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ii) List a few of Dickens’ major novels
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 A Tale of Two Cities ..............................................................................................................
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit )

1.3 A TALE OF TWO CITIES: BACKGROUND

Dickens wrote during the Victorian age, when Queen Victoria was ruler
of England. It was above all the age of great social change, marked by the
dates of the two Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867 ──the period of Dickens’
literary production as well. The Reform Bills gave franchise to working-
class men in response to movements like Chartism, which made demands
for greater democratic participation in the government. A number of other
legislations were enacted in such areas as factory reform, wages, education,
public health, divorce and inheritance for women, trade and agriculture.
The success in achieving reform measures in England was directly related
to revolutionary movements in the rest of Europe, particularly France.
Dickens was an active campaigner for reform, arguing, like many other
Victorian thinkers, that this was the only way of staving off violent social
upheavals like revolutions. This connection will be discussed in greater
detail in the next units, in the specific context of A Tale of Two Cities.
The Victorian age - especially after the 1850s - was also an age of progress:
it was a period of rapid industrialization, imperial expansion and population
increase, all of which led to overall material prosperity. The resulting feeling
of nationalist pride could often sound complacent and jingoistic. Therefore,
many of the writers of the time, like Carlyle, Ruskin, Dickens and Morris
directed their social criticism towards the materialism, the continuing
economic and social disparities, the philistinism and the aggressive
temper of the age, though at the same time these writers often shared the
contemporary belief in progress.
Dickens was a recorder of the Victorian age, both celebrating and criticizing
it. This double attitude is well exemplified in his description of the coming
of the railways in Dombey and Son: he views it both as a sign of progress
as well as a threat posed by change. Similarly in A Tale of Two Cities, he
says, 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'. Though A Tale of
Two Cities is a historical novel we must not forget that Dickens writes of an
earlier time from the perspective of his own historical position.
Check Your Progress 2
i) Identify two important aspects of the Victorian period described
above.
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 .............................................................................................................. Introduction: A Tale of
Two Cities
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ii) What is Dickens’ relation to the period in which he wrote?
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit)

1.4 A TALE OF TWO CITIES IN RELATION TO

DICKENS’ OTHER WORKS
A Tale of Two Cities has always been treated as something of an aberration
among Dickens’ novels. Edgar Johnson calls it Dickens' "least characteristic"
book, and many standard critical works have little or nothing to say about
the novel. In this Unit we shall argue that though A Tale of Two Cities shares
some common preoccupations with Dickens' other novels, it goes, in a
fundamental sense, against the grain of Dickens' development. You can see
this in the self-congratulatory celebration of "Englishness" that underlies
the novel. Let us look at the continuities first.
1.4.1 Dickens' Portrayal of Women
Dickens' chief women characters in A Tale of Two Cities follow the pattern
set in many of his other novels. Dickens' heroines are not among his major
character creations. He both used and constructed the Victorian stereotype
of the woman as the "angel in the house." Such a woman is above all a good
homemaker, a good wife, daughter, and mother, always patient, submissive,
and acceptably "feminine". The figure of Agnes in David Copperfield is
a-well-known example of such a heroine; Florence Dombey (Dombey and
Son), Esther Summerson (Bleak House), Amy Dorrit (Little Dorrit), are
very similar. Thus Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities may be viewed as
a typical Dickens heroine. She is deprecatingly described in the novel itself
(by Sidney Carton, who does not perhaps really mean it) as a "golden-haired
doll".
In contrast and often in opposition to the "fair" heroine there is also, in
many of Dickens' novels, the "dark" woman who is passionate, vengeful,
and troublesome. She is outside the pale of the domestic, an outsider, a
criminal, a woman with a past, or a foreigner. Mme. Defarge in A Tale of
Two Cities is based on this type, but she also breaks, in significant ways,
from Dickens’ other "dark" women. What distinguishes Mme. Defarge is
her commitment to the revolutionary cause. Mme. Defarge is, as we shall
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 A Tale of Two Cities see, a highly talented woman, whose outstanding intellectual abilities and
organizational skills make her the natural leader among the masses of St.
Antoine. Dickens, it would seem, is actually afraid of her commitment and
her abilities. Dickens had consistently disapproved of work-oriented anti-
domestic women, but the school -teacher Miss Blimber (Dombey and Son)
or the professional philanthropist Mrs. Jelleby (Bleak House) are the only
ones clearly satirized. In A Tale of Two Cities on the other hand, the threat
that Mme Defarge poses not just to domesticity but also to the larger social
organizations, is so strong that she has to be actually killed.
1.4.2 Theme of Burial and Resurrection
Dickens uses the ideas of death and resurrection, with the associated concept
of death-in-life, in a central way in A Tale of Two Cities. These themes are
then developed in some of the later novels that follow it. In A Tale of Two
Cities, one of the major centres of interest is the story of Dr. Manette, a man
deeply traumatized by eighteen years in prison, a form of "burial" alive.
He recovers his energies and interests after his release though not without
occasional relapses into a condition of withdrawal. In Great Expectations,
which followed soon after, Dickens shows in the figure of Miss Havisham a
character outside this mode who, refuses to emerge from her self -imposed
burial, and becomes a warped and unhealthy person as a result. In Our
Mutual Friend, Dickens' last completed novel, the theme of resurrection
is explored most fully. The hero, John Harmon, believed dead, is in fact
rescued, and assumes another name and identity in his "resurrected" life.
The theme interested Dickens because it allowed him to explore questions
of human identity through such devices and psychological case studies as
the "double", the schizophrenic, and the obsessive. The famous "twins" in A
Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, are anticipated and
developed in other Dickens' novels, though not in terms of actual physical
resemblance. Thus critics have noted that Pip, the hero of Great Expectations,
and Orlick, the villain, are aspects of a single person, similarly we have
Eugene Wraybum and Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend, united by
their mutual, antagonism and their love for the same woman. The "double"
serves the function of surrogacy and scapegoating, which have implications
that we shall examine later in the specific context of A Tale of Two Cities.
1.4.3 Dickens and the Revolution
Although Dickens subjected virtually every institution of the English state
to radical criticism, he was always deeply apprehensive about the prospect
of a revolutionary upsurge in England. During the 1830s, when Dickens
first began writing, the prospect of a revolution in England was very real.
The economy was extremely unstable, and the living conditions of the
working classes unbearable. The result was consecutive waves of working
class agitations that culminated in the Chartist movement.
In his early novels, Dickens shared with many of his reform-minded
contemporaries the conviction that the government had failed badly in
providing the working classes with even the minimum decencies of life.
But he also believed in the deeply entrenched middle-class image of any
form of plebian uprising as anarchic and mindlessly violent. In The Chimes
Dickens himself depicts with great vividness the process by which one of
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 the characters ─ Will Fern ─ is driven to total penury. But when Fern speaks Introduction: A Tale of
of participating in an uprising against an oppressive state, Dickens’ imagery Two Cities
increasingly highlights the anarchic, destructive dimensions of such events.
When Dickens turned to the happenings in France in A Tale of Two Cities,
it was from the safety of the 1860s. Accordingly, as we shall see in the
entire Unit we devote to Dickens’ representation of the French revolution
--- Dickens is able to project the revolution as a mad orgy of bloodletting
without the anxiety that had underlain the world or Dickens' early novels
where revolution had been a real possibility.
1.4.4 A Tale of Two Cities and Dickens’ Later Novels
In spite of the continuities we have noted above, A Tale of Two Cities differs
in one fundamental sense from the other novels of Dickens’ later period. In
order to respond to these differences we need to look a little more closely at
the society to which the later Dickens was reacting as a novelist. Dickens’
later novels were written in what has often been described as the " Age of
Improvement" or "The Age of Progress". This period began roughly around
1850 and witnessed sustained economic growth, social and political stability,
and rising standards of living for the majority. One of the great achievements
of Dickens’ later works is that they refuse to rest contented with "progress",
and continue to expose to radical scrutiny the vital institutions of the Age
of Improvement — its laws, its bureaucracy, its stock market, and its great
metropolitan city.
Seen against this background A Tale of Two Cities is deficient in two important
respects. Firstly, removed as it is in time from mid - Victorian England, the
world of A Tale of Two Cities lacks the social density of Dombey and Son or
Little Doritt and is as such incapable of providing Dickens with the context
where his social imagination might find full expression. Thus A Tale of Two
Cities has nothing that can compare with Dickens’ treatment of the railway
in Dombey and Son, or the idea of gentlemanliness in Great Expectations.
Even more seriously, unlike Dombey and Son, Bleak House, Little Dorrit,
Great Expectation or Our Mutual Friend, which are deeply, fundamentally
critical of the society of which they are a product, A Tale of Two Cities is
imbued with a very uncharacteristic sense of smugness. Thus if the idea of
"Englishness" is an object of contempt in Our Mutual Friend, in A Tale of
Two Cities it is portrayed as an orderly and moderate mindset whose virtues
are highlighted by the anarchic excesses of France.
Check Your Progress 3
i) What are the two contrasted types of women characters found in
Dickens’ novels, and how can you relate the central female figures in
A Tale of Two Cities to them?
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 A Tale of Two Cities ii) Relate the theme of burial and resurrection in A Tale of Two Cities to
its use in some of Dickens’ other novels.
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this unit)

1.5 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have looked at the life of Dickens against the backdrop
of the Victorian Age. Dickens was a prolific writer who wrote fourteen
novels most of which are now considered 'classics'. Although he celebrated
the great progress made by Victorian England, Dickens was a critic of the
economic and social disparities that he saw around him. A Tale Of Two Cities
shares some similarities with the other novels of Dickens: in his portrayal of
women, in his use of the themes of burial and resurrection and in his faith in
reform rather than revolution. Yet despite these similarities, A Tale of Two
Cities is different because it projects an uncharacteristic sense of smug faith
in' Englishness' as opposed to what are seen as the excesses of the French.
We shall discuss this further in the subsequent Units.

1.6 GLOSSARY
Aberration : a sudden change away from the habitual way of thinking
or acting
Bloodletting : bloodshed
Deprecating : to feel and express disapproval of, plead against
Bloodletting : bloodshed
Jingoism : blind admiration of one's country; proud belief that one's
country is politically, and morally better than all others
Orgy : excessive indulgence in any activity
Penury : state of being very poor
Philistinism : condition of disliking art, music or beautifu1 things
Plebian : member of the common people of the lower social classes
Polemical : in the habit of arguing, attacking or defending opinions,
ideas, etc.
Scapegoat : person or thing taking the blame for the fault of others
Schizophrenic : 
dementia marked by introversion and loss of connection
between thoughts, feelings, and actions
Surrogate : acting or used in place of another substitute

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 Trauma : damage to the mind caused by some shock or command Introduction: A Tale of
or some terrible experience Two Cities

Virtuosity : a very high degree of skill in performance in one of the arts

1.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
i) Dickens’ father being sent to prison had a very great affect on Dickens.
ii) Some of his works include novels like Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity
Shop, Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Sons, David Copperfield, Hard
Times, Great Expectations and many others.
Check Your Progress 2
i) 
The Reform Bills which gave franchise to working-class men
and therefore, democratic participation in government and many
legislative reforms involving wages, education, public health,
inheritance for women etc. Secondly, it was an age of progress as far
as industrialization and imperial expansion was concerned.
ii) Dickens was a recorder of the Victorian age. He celebrated it as well
as criticized it.
Check Your Progress 3
i) One is the “angel in the house” type of woman, while the other is
the “dark” woman who is vengeful and troublesome. Lucie Manette
represents the former and Mme. Defarge represents the latter in A Tale
of Two Cities.
ii) The theme of burial and resurrection can be seen in Great Expectations
in the character of Miss Havisham, who returns to emerge from her
self-imposed burial. In Our Mutual Friend, John Harmon who is
believed to be dead is rescued, and assumes another name and identity
in his “resurrected” life.

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 UNIT 2  SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS
Structure
2.0 Aims and Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Summary of Book I
2.2.1 Chapters 1—4
2.2.2 Chapters 5—6
2.3 Summary of Book II
2.3.1 Chapter 1: Five Years Later
2.3.2 Chapter 2: A Sight
2.3.3 Chapter 3: A Disappointment
2.3.4 Chapter 4: Congratulatory
2.3.5 Chapter 5: The Jackal
2.3.6 Chapter 6: Hundreds of People
2.3.7 Chapters 7—9
2.3.8 Chapters 10—14
2.3.9 Chapters 15—16
2.3.10 Chapters17—20
2.3.11 Chapters 21—24
2.4 Summary of Book III
2.4.1 Chapters 1—6
2.4.2 Chapters 7—10
2.4.3 Chapters 11—15
2.5 Let Us Sum Up
2.6 Glossary
2.7 Answers to Check Your Progress

2.0 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

In this Unit, we have given you a detailed summary of the novel A Tale of
Two Cities with critical comments as well as necessary quotations from the
text, so that you can recognize the passages as and when we refer to them.
By the end of this unit you will:
●● understand the story of the novel
●● follow the discussion that we have provided in the next two units
better.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
Please read this unit carefully because it is here that you will find the raw
material for all the subsequent discussions. Please keep the novel with you
for ready reference as this summary should not be a substitute for reading
the actual novel.

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 Summary and Analysis
2.2 SUMMARY OF BOOK I
Let us now delve into the detailed summary of Book I.
2.2.1 Chapters 1-4
Summary: The novel begins on a dark and dangerous night with a man
called Jarvis Lorry embarking on a strange mission. His mission is to help
with the rehabilitation of Dr. Manette, a French physician who had been
unjustly imprisoned in the most terrible prison in France - the Bastille -
for eighteen years and is now, finally, released. Lorry arranges a meeting
between Manette and his daughter Lucie who has never seen her father. Dr.
Manette finds it impossible to believe that he has been "recalled to life".
Defarge an old servant offers him accommodation in a loft that resembles
his old prison cell. Mr. Lorry has broken the news of her father's release to
Lucie and has now accompanied her from England to France to meet him.
Comment: The first important thing to note about these early chapters is
the novel's famous opening paragraph:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief; it was the epoch of
incredulity....
We guess from this, that the novel is going to be about "the ... times", that
is, it is going to talk about a historical era as much as about individuals
and families which are the normal preoccupations of novels. The age that
the novel dramatizes is that of the French revolution (i.e., the last quarter
of the eighteenth century). Dickens’ opening paragraph suggests that the
revolutionary period was a complex one, and that there were many ways of
looking at it as the best of times as well as the worst of times, as wise as well
as foolish, as idealistic belief as well as false consciousness. In a later unit
which will discuss the topic at length, we will try to gauge whether Dickens
does in fact treat the French revolution with the complexity that is promised
in the opening paragraph ─ and which it deserves as a crucial political event
in the history of Europe. The opening paragraphs can also be examined as
an example of Dickens’ stylistic virtuosity, as in this analysis by the critic
Martin Fido:
In this magnificent opening Dickens seeks to hold the reader's attention by
reducing chaos to disguised order. His opening sentence ─ really a series
of unpunctuated sentences ─ gives the appearance of chaos by its speedy
contradictions; actually it is almost blatantly ordered in that the pairs of
opposites make every second clause completely predictable.
Parallel pairs are extended in the second paragraph to present the comparison
between the two countries. In the third paragraph Dickens sets up a slightly
supercilious ironical tone of moral condemnation, which is to be used
throughout the book with reference to England. The fourth paragraph
provides the grim irony, which is to be used for France, and predicts the
subject of the book. The fifth paragraph shows that England is certainly
not going to be held up as a perfect moral exemplar to France; indicates
the theme of lawlessness which is to be peculiarly English in the book, and
returns to the suggestion of anarchy which the opening sentence appeared
to indicate. And the last paragraph leads back to the notion of specific
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 A Tale of Two Cities people directing their individual lives through this historical climate, and so
prepares us for the opening of the action.
The opening chapters are important for another reason as well. They tell us
of the terrible circumstances surrounding one of the important characters
of the novel Dr. Manette. The experience of being imprisoned for eighteen
years in the prison, the Bastille, has a terrible impact upon his character and
affects him in strange ways even after his release, as we shall see.
2.2.2 Chapters 5 - 6
Summary: The action moves to a suburb of Paris - St. Antoine - where Dr.
Manette has been sheltered in a dark loft by his former servant Defarge.
The loft is located over a wine-shop presided over by Defarge’s wife. At
this place a group of three men, all addressed as "Jacques", mysteriously
gather to peep at the poor prisoner. An emotional meeting between father
and daughter takes place. Manette is bewildered and withdrawn, and
clings to his cobbler's tools and bench since he has been accustomed to
the occupation of shoe making in prison. Lucie shows great compassion
and resilience in dealing with the situation. It is decided that Mr. Lorry, Dr.
Manette, and Lucie should leave Paris without delay, and soon they embark
on their journey to London.
Comment: We see Dr. Manette constantly engaged in making shoes as it
prevents him, as he later explains, from going mad under the pressure of
his loneliness. Even after he has gained a great deal of normality under
Lucie's loving care, he reverts to his shoe making whenever he finds himself
unable to cope with mental tension. Dr. Manette's personality is split as he
fluctuates between being the caring parent and doctor at most times, and the
prisoner who obsessively makes shoes to stave off the horrors of his past
life at certain other times. We would call his condition schizophrenia today.
We shall see later how not only Dr. Manette, but many other characters may
be viewed as divided personalities.
You should now go on to read Chapter 5 very carefully. Set in St. Antoine,
a suburb of Paris which became the epicenter of the revolution, Chapter 5
introduces themes, ideas, and images that are absolutely crucial to Dickens’
representation of the French revolution. The first striking thing about St.
Antoine is its poverty, manifest in the eagerness with which the local
inhabitants rush to scoop up the red wine that has spilled on the streets from
a broken cask. When a "tall joker" dips his finger in the muddy wine and
scrawls the word "Blood" on the wall, a connection is suggested between
a poverty-stricken people and a bloody revolution. But the blood-wine
connection also connects the impending revolution to the horrible idea
of blood drinking. Further, the incident subverts the traditional religious
symbolism of wine as Christ's blood in the Roman Catholic sacrament.
So from the very beginning, Dickens’ attitude to the French revolution
is marked by duplicity. While on the one hand he shows that the French
poor have good reason to revolt, on the other he suggests that the actual
revolution will be an orgy of blood-letting.
In this section we are briefly introduced to one of the novel's chief characters.
Mme. Defarge, who stays in the shadows, knitting. Both Mme. Defarge and
her knitting will gain in significance as the novel progresses.
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 Check Your Progress 1 Summary and Analysis

i) How does Dickens describe the era in which he sets the novel?
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ii) What is the significance of the blood-wine imagery?
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit)

2.3 SUMMARY OF BOOK II

And now let us go on to the chapter wise summary and anaysis of Book II.
2.3.1 Chapter 1: Five Years Later
Summary: Tellson's Bank, where Mr. Lorry is employed, is described as
an "old fashioned place", in this respect like England itself. Jerry Cruncher
is employed by Tellson as an odd-job man and porter. Cruncher's home-life
is described . His wife is a meek, hard-working woman whom Jerry scolds
constantly for "praying agin me". His son admires and imitates Jerry.
Comment: Dickens is gently satirical of Tellson's Bank. The main point for
you to note is his criticism of England, whose resistance to change is a sign
of complacency. He also remarks on the barbarity of the laws in eighteenth
century England, which invoked the death sentence for even minor crimes.
The scenes of the Cruncher household are among the few comic interludes
in this novel. Jerry is a typical household tyrant and bully, who uses his wife
as a scapegoat.
2.3.2 Chapter 2: A Sight
Summary: Charles Darnay, a French immigrant, is tried for treason at
the Old Bailey. Dickens describes Darnay as follows: ..." a young man of
about five and twenty, well grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek
and a dark eye". There is a large crowd at the trial, chiefly because of the
widespread public interest at the time in witnessing the death of a criminal.
Among the witnesses are Dr. Manette and his daughter.
Comment: Chapter 2 introduces us in a dramatic way to Charles Darnay
who may be considered the "hero" of the novel. (You may wish to begin
thinking at this point about the nature of a hero, and about the kind of hero
we may expect to find in a historical novel). Darnay attracts Lucie Manette's
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 A Tale of Two Cities interest and sympathy, as he does ours. Dickens also satirises in this chapter,
the barbarity of the English laws of the time, as well as the "ogreish" interest
of the "mob" in such spectacles as hanging and quartering. He wishes us
to note that in this respect the English people are no different from the
bloodthirsty French populace that later will gather in such large numbers
to watch the deaths of the aristocrats at the Guillotine. (Note the different
connotations of the words "crowd", "mob", and "rabble", all of which
describe a gathering of people).
2.3.3 Chapter 3: A Disappointment
Summary: At the end of a long and suspenseful trial, Darnay is acquitted,
thanks mainly to the efforts of Sydney Carton, an assistant to the defence
attorney. Carton's most effective strategy is his demonstration of his
own close resemblance to the prisoner -- he thereby confuses one of the
opposition's witnesses. Jerry, a spectator at the court, thinks that the phrase
"recalled to life" (earlier applied by Mr. Lorry to Dr. Manettee's rescue),
would aptly apply to Darnay now.
Comment: This chapter marks the first appearance of Sydney Carton, who
may also be regarded as the hero or one of the heroes - of the novel. His
appearance is described as "careless and slovenly if not debauched" - in
contrast to Darnay's gentlemanly appearance. Yet the resemblance between
the two, noted and pointed out by Carton himself, is of great significance in
the acquittal of Darnay, and anticipates the ending of the book. The theme
of the "double" engages Dickens in many of his books. At this point in A
Tale of Two Cities it is used merely as a striking and useful coincidence.'
2.3.4 Chapter 4: Congratulatory
Summary: Dr. Manette, five years after his release, has recovered, but
occasionally the "shadow of the Bastille" is still visible upon him. Lucie's
role in saving him is described by the metaphor of the "golden thread".
Lucie connects the earliest part of Dr. Manette's life with the present, both
happy times: hence she herself is the "golden thread". Carton and Darnay
dine together, and we are called upon to note their mutual antipathy. The
chapter ends with Carton's reflections upon his sense of a wasted life.
Comment: One of the major centers of interest in the novel is Dickens’
psychological analysis of Dr. Manette, a man released after eighteen years
of unjust solitary confinement. Dickens wishes to make Sydney Carton also
a complex character, but he never quite explains the reasons for Carton's
failure. Carton, therefore, strikes us as a person full of self-pity, rather than
as a truly tragic figure.
2.3.5 Chapter 5: The Jackal
Summary: The "jackal" refers to Sydney Carton, since he "rendered
suit and service" to Stryver the "lion". In conversation with Stryver, he
disparages Lucie as a "golden - haired Doll" (In your opinion how apt is this
description?). When Carton returns home in the early hours of the morning,
he perceives the darkness as symbolic of "the waste forces within him"
(refer to Chapter 5).
Comment: Dickens develops the portrait of an anti-hero (a character whose
qualities are the reverse of a hero's even though he possesses all the abilities
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 of a hero - such as courage, intelligence, good looks, talents). The mood and Summary and Analysis
symbolism of the last paragraphs of the chapter will be recalled at the novel's
end when Carton decides upon his ‘sacrifice’ (see Book III, Chapter 9).
2.3.6 Chapter 6: Hundreds of People
Summary: We are introduced in this chapter to Dr. Manette's quiet and
pleasant house in Soho, a district in London. Miss Pross, Lucie's devoted
companion, and, Mr. Lorry, now a family friend, discuss Dr. Manette’s
condition, and remark with concern on his need to retain his cobbler's bench
and tools in his room, Lucie expresses a fanciful thought to her visitors:
that the echoes of street sounds are the "footsteps of the people who are to
come into my life, and my father's". Dr. Manette is upset when he hears a
story about a prisoner in the Tower. Soon after, a storm breaks out. Dickens
prophesies another symbolic storm when "a great crowd of people with its
rush and roar" shall bear down upon them.
Comment: Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry take on their roles of devoted friends
of the Manettes. We also see the progress of the two young men's interest in
Lucie. Dickens describes the house as a "harbour from the raging streets".
In all his books Dickens praises the home as a refuge, and the woman as
the maker of the home. Thus, Lucie's skill in home-making is an important
aspect of the tranquil domesticity that Dickens contrasts with the world
outside. And, yet the "home" cannot entirely keep the "world" out. The
place attracts echoes and these seem symbolic to Lucie of coming events; so
too, to Dickens, is the storm that breaks out. In what ways can you interpret
these symbols?
2.3.7 Chapters 7—9
Summary: The action moves back to Paris, this time to the world of the
aristocracy. Dickens’ attitude to this class is satirical. He introduces us to
one of its members by his title - Monseigneur, or Lord - rather than by his
name, as if it was only the former that truly identified him. This Monseigneur
is a decadent, parasitical creature: It requires four men, all "ablaze with
gorgeous decorations" to feed him his evening beverage, Dickens tells us.
Another aristocrat, the Marquis d' Evremonde, is seen in attendance at his
court. The Marquis is a cold-bloodedly cruel man, as we discover when
his coach runs over a poor child in the streets of the crowded St. Antoine
district. In response to the father's grief, the Marquis contemptuously tosses
a coin into the crowd, as the residents of St. Antoine watch in silent anger.
At home, the Marquis receives a guest late at night who turns out to be none
other than Charles Darnay. From their conversation we learn that Darnay
is the Marquis's nephew and heir. But Darnay has renounced his name, his
title, and his class. He condemns the greed and cruelty of the aristocracy, and
gives up all claims to his inheritance. The Marquis reacts contemptuously,
but his contempt does not last long. That very night he is murdered; he
is discovered in the morning with a knife driven through his heart with a
message that says: "Drive him fast to his tomb"!
Comment: In this unit we perceive a pattern of violence and counter-
violence, which will emerge as an important underlying theme in Dickens’
interpretation of the French revolution. Unlike Burke, many of whose
images Dickens uses in A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens sees the French
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 A Tale of Two Cities aristocracy not as noble victims but as coldblooded oppressors. But the
Marquis's violent death is also a foretaste of the violence that will later
be unleashed by the Revolution. This becomes Dickens’ primary mode of
representing this historical event, rather than any more deliberative analysis.
Both images and rhetoric are employed emotively in depicting the violence
of events. Thus the blood red reflection of the rising sun as it is reflected
in the "chateau fountain" is another symbol of the blood that will be spilt
during the Revolution, like the wine in the previous chapters. The other
important symbol that Dickens develops is the motif of knitting. Mme.
Defarge knits continuously as she watches -- the killing of the little child, the
Marquis's arrogant compensation for the death that he has caused, the silent
helplessness of the crowd. She knitted, says Dickens, with the "steadfastness
of fate". Through her knitting Mme. Defarge keeps an account of all the
crimes perpetrated by the aristocracy. The inevitable retribution, when it
does come, will be extremely violent. Knitting has a traditional association
in Greek myth with the steady pattern and progress of Fate, and thus Mme.
Defarge becomes a larger-than-life figure, representing fate itself. At the
same time knitting is a "feminine" and commonplace domestic activity, one
that it would be natural for a woman in Mme. Defarge's position to do. We
notice how she consciously subverts this association by using it instead, for
her own sinister purposes. Her knitted register is doubly coded because it
appears to be an innocuous routine activity, and it uses symbols that only
Mme. Defarge can interpret. Thus it serves as the perfect cover for Mme.
Defarge ' s secret revolutionary activities.
2.3.8 Chapters 10 -14
Chapter 10: Two Promises
Summary: Charles Darnay's modest profession as a teacher of French in
London and Cambridge is described. He is in love with Lucie Manette,
and meets Dr. Manette to seek his permission to court her. He analyses the
unique relationship between this father and daughter, as "I know that when
she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are
round your neck". Two promises are demanded and made in this chapter.
Darnay requests Dr. Manette to say nothing against him if Lucie should
ever confide her love for him. When he offers to reveal his real identity, Dr.
Manette in turn makes him promise that he will only tell him when, or if,
their marriage should take place.
Comment: The dramatic irony of Darnay's falling in love with Lucie
becomes clear only later in the book when the Evremondes' role in Dr.
Manette's arrest is disclosed. Nevertheless, Dr. Manette's apprehensions are
clearly due to more than his unusually close relationship with his daughter
– hence the promise he demands of Darnay. Darnay's understanding of this
relationship is idealised but is accurate in many respects.
Chapter 11: A Companion Picture
Summary: Stryver confides to Carton his decision to propose marriage to
Lucie. Comment: This is a comic scene, which shows Stryver's conceit and
pomposity.
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 Chapter 12: The Fellow of Delicacy Summary and Analysis

Summary: When Mr. Lorry advises Stryver against proposing, Stryver

saves face by pretending to have lost interest in Lucie himself.
Comment: This comic chapter brings Stryver's "courtship" to an end.
Stryver's tactic is a classic example of saying "sour grapes" in order to
reconcile oneself to the unattainable.
Chapter 13: The Fellow of No Delicacy
Summary: Sydney Carton proposes to Lucie and is gently and regretfully
rejected by her.
Comment: Dickens intends a contrast between Lucie's two suitors, "the
fellow of delicacy" (Stryver), and "the fellow of no delicacy" (Carton). He
uses these designations ironically. The chapter is an example of Dickens’
well-known sentimentality. Carton’s promise to help Lucie at this point
becomes prophetic. The Victorian ideal of the woman as one who redeems
mankind is set forth here.
Chapter 14: The Honest Tradesman
Summary: The chapter begins with a "crowd" scene, of the kind that A
Tale of Two Cities is famous for. A crowd attacks a funeral procession since
the dead man is rumoured to be a spy. Jerry Cruncher and his son join
the crowd and attend the burial. Cruncher sets out secretly in the dead of
night, followed by his curious son and attended by two other friends, to
steal the corpse of the "spy", Roger Cly. They find the grave empty. Young
Jerry runs away in fright, with the "strong idea that the coffin he had seen
was running after him". Cruncher takes out his disappointment on his wife.
Jerry explains to his son that a "Resurrection Man" is a "tradesman” whose
“goods are a branch of scientific goods".
Comment: The theme of "resurrection” or being "recalled to life" is an
important one in this novel. By making Jerry Cruncher a secret grave-robber
(who sells his corpses to medical students), Dickens treats the theme in a
gruesomely comic fashion. The chapter also reveals Dickens’ attitude to the
"mob", or "rabble", as he calls it: an attitude of simultaneous revulsion and
fascination. The irrationality and violence of the mob makes him describe it
as "a monster much dreaded"
2.3.9 Chapters 15—16
Summary: These chapters are set in Defarge's gloomy wine shop. Chapter
15 begins with a road mender's eyewitness account of the execution of a
man called Gaspard as narrated to Defarge and his friends. Gaspard, in
fact, is the man whose son had been run over by the Marquis's carriage and
who had then revenged himself by stabbing the Marquis. As punishment
by the law, he is arrested, paraded through the streets, tortured and publicly
hanged. While Defarge and his friends listen to the road mender's account
with rising indignation, Mme. Defarge, standing in the shadows, calmly
continues her knitting. It would be impossible, Dickens says, to erase one
letter from "the knitted register" that Mme. Defarge keeps, on the crimes
of the aristocracy. After Defarge's guests depart, a state spy named Barsad
enters the wine shop. The Defarges show great skill in countering Barsad's
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 A Tale of Two Cities attempts to extract information from them. Before his departure, Barsad
reveals that the daughter of Defarge's old master, Dr. Manette, has married
the aristocrat Evremonde who now calls himself Darnay in England.
Defarge and his wife have faith in a people's revolution in France, but they
have different attitudes to the class enemy, the aristocrats. Defarge shows a
semblance of feeling for his former master when he expresses the hope that
his son-in-law will never venture into post-revolutionary France; but Mme.
Defarge more dispassionately holds that Darnay's fate should have nothing
to do with their personal feelings for Dr. Manette.
Comment: The pattern of violence and counter-violence that, we have seen,
underlying Dickens’ interpretation of the events in France is reinforced in
Chapters 15 and 16. We can now unravel the pattern: the Marquis kills a
child accidentally and then, treats the child's parents with utter contempt;
Gaspard (the child's father) avenges himself on the Marquis; Gaspard is
arrested, tortured and publicly executed by the laws of a State that is ruled
by the members of the Marquis's class, the aristocracy; these atrocities are
recorded in Mme. Defarge's register and will no doubt trigger off counter
atrocities when the revolutionaries seize power.
The chapters we are discussing are important also because they give us an
inside view of the thinking of the revolutionaries and of Mme. Defarge.
Dickens’ attitude to the revolutionaries is, it seems to us, split. On the one
hand he sees them as "dark, revengeful, repressed", capable of unleashing
unlimited violence if ever they should gain access to power. Of Mme.
Defarge, Dickens even says that "the world would do well" never to breed
the likes of her again. But, on the other hand, under this condemnation lies
a very real if somewhat frightened admiration as well. The revolutionaries
are a determined lot and have a strong secret organisation. The Defarges
show their experience and their ability to survive as underground political
activists through the skill with which they handle the spy Barsad. The natural
leader of the St. Antoine revolutionaries is, of course, Mme. Defarge. It is
her unswerving confidence in the inevitability of the revolution that keeps
alive the hopes of Defarge and his friends, and it is her razor sharp powers
of observation and her unfailing memory which documents these acts of
oppression. What is more, Mme. Defarge is an extraordinary organiser who
is in constant touch with the people of St. Antoine, and channelises the
anger of their miserable lives into the cause of the revolution:
In the evening, at which season of all others, St. Antoine turned itself inside
out, and sat on doorsteps and window-ledges - Mme. Defarge with her work
in hand was accustomed to pass from place to place, group to group ...
They knitted worthless things but the mechanical work was a mechanical
substitute for eating and drinking ..... if the bony fingers had been still, the
stomachs would have been more pinched.
Knitting now gains another meaning. It has grown into a symbol of the
solidarity that is developing increasingly among the hungry and the poor
- and the person who contributes most to bringing about this solidarity
is Mme. Defarge. Consider also the therapeutic function of knitting as a
mechanical activity, and consider whether it resembles Dr. Manette's shoe-
making in this respect.
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 2.3.10 Chapters 17 -20 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 17: One Night

Summary: On the night before Lucie's wedding, Dr. Manette accepts her
reassurances of continuing love and duty whole-heartedly, recalling his
prison days by way of contrast to his present happiness. Dickens offers a
comment on the kind of strength of character displayed by Dr. Manette in,
overcoming the trauma of the past.
Comment: This chapter provides further insight into Dr. Manette's character,
and into the unique nature of the relationship between father and daughter.
Chapter 18: Nine Days
Summary: As soon as Lucie leaves on her honeymoon with her husband,
Dr. Manette breaks down as a result of Charles Darnay's disclosures to him.
This takes the form of a relapse into his old pastime of making shoes. Mr.
Lorry and Miss Pross are dismayed and helpless.
Comment: Dickens’ psychological insight into the nature of trauma is an
acute one. His account of Dr. Manette's breakdown is chillingly accurate.
Chapter 19: An Opinion
Summary: After nine days in this condition, Dr. Manette spontaneously
recovers, to his friends' amazement. At Mr. Lorry's urging, he analyses his
condition, expresses his confidence that such a relapse will not occur again
and, as a safeguard against its recurrence, agrees - though reluctantly - to
give up his workbench and tools. Accordingly, Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross
destroy them, feeling irrationally guilty as they do so.
Comment: The analysis of Dr. Manette is continued in this chapter. Dr.
Manette's self-knowledge comes from his fear of the "delicate organisation
of the mind", but is also informed by the, "confidence of a man who had
slowly won his assurance out of personal endurance and distress". His
explanation of his attachment to the occupation of shoe-making as a form
of therapy is worth noting.
Chapter 20: A Plea
Summary: Carton gets permission from Darnay to continue to visit the
family. Lucie expresses to her husband her faith in Carton.
Comment: By providing this explanation of the relationship between
Lucie and Sydney Carton, Dickens makes Carton's sacrifice at the end more
credible to the reader.
2.3.11 Chapters 21 - 24
Summary: In this section that comprises the last four chapters of Book II,
the action moves rapidly back and forth between England and France. It
begins in England with an evocation of the peace, and bliss that envelopes
Lucie's home. Lucie's home represents in miniature the peace and stability
that England itself enjoys. In contrast, across the Channel a great revolution
has broken out in France and its reverberations echo even in Lucie's protected
home. Then the action shifts to France and we are given a direct first-hand
account of the revolution. A great armed crowd (of which the Defarges are a
part) has gathered on the streets of Paris and proceeds to storm the Bastille.
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 A Tale of Two Cities Defarge finds the cell where Dr. Manette had been imprisoned, and finds
a hidden document there. The crowd then moves through the length and
breadth of Paris killing and arresting anyone who is even remotely suspected
of being an enemy of the revolution. One such victim is the notorious
speculator Foulon, whom the crowd gleefully hangs with a handful of grass
stuffed in his mouth. Another victim is Gabelle, an employee of Darnay's
who finds himself on the wrong side of the revolutionary council precisely
because of this. Darnay decides to come to Paris in response to Gabelle's
plea for help.
Comment: Chapters 21, 22, 23 give us the first extended and direct
descriptions of the French revolution in this narrative. As we might expect,
Dickens’ attitude to the revolution is almost entirely negative. He shows it
as bloodthirsty, anarchic, and ultimately self-destructive since it brings, not
a period of abundance, but only famine and drought. The revolutionaries are
depicted again as a hungry mob who find compensation for their material
impoverishment in the cruelty that they inflict upon their perceived enemies,
and who are so fanatical that they laugh when heads are chopped off. What
are the means by which Dickens manages to give a negative colouring to
his depiction of the revolution while seemingly providing an objective
account? Partly by direct statement − i.e. by describing or stating outright
the cruelty or arbitrariness of the revolutionaries. More important is his use
of a specific kind of language and imagery for these accounts. We shall later
discuss at greater length the rhetorical strategies by which Dickens manages
to make us see the French revolution as a terrible event.
Check Your Progress 2
i) Comment on the significance of the resemblance between Carton and
Darnay.
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
ii) What is the significance of Mme Defarge’s knitting? List at least three
meanings that the image of knitting acquires in the novel.
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
iii) What are the qualities that Dickens connects with the revolution and
the revolutionaries?
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
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 .............................................................................................................. Summary and Analysis

..............................................................................................................
(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit)

2.4 SUMMARY OF BOOK III

And now let us read a summary and analysis of Book III
2.4.1 Chapters 1-6
Summary: Darnay enters Paris and is soon arrested. As an ex- aristocrat
and an emigre Darnay has no rights at all. Lucie and her family arrive in
Paris, frantically in search of Darnay. Now a small English community is
set up in the very midst of revolutionary Paris which replicates the ordered
life of the Soho home. As an ex- prisoner of the Bastille, and therefore, by
implication a victim of the oppression of the aristocracy, Dr. Manette enjoys
the goodwill of the revolution. He uses this to his advantage. Using great
resilience and perseverance, he manages to gain access to the inner circle of
the revolutionary committees. He is able to at least ensure that Darnay will
not be arbitrarily executed. He then sends the good news to Lucie.
Comment: In this section the action moves entirely to France. The country
is seen to be entirely in the grip of what Dickens represents as revolutionary
anarchy. The almost mythical aura of horror with which Dickens surrounds
the revolution is achieved through various means - such as the inexorable
process by which Darnay finds himself arrested by the very people whose
cause he has always supported; by the incessant crash of the guillotine blade
as it chops off heads; by the mad and orgiastic frenzy of the dance of the
Carmagnole; and by the hellish scenes of the turning of the grindstone (see
Chapter 2). As against this mad behaviour of the French, the English group
are shown to be full of fortitude and calm. The contrast is one between
two nations, or races, as well as an opposition between the "home" and
the "nation", in which the former possesses moral value, while the latter
possesses power. Thus we see the fragile Lucie running her household in
as orderly and caring a manner as in England, in spite of being under great
emotional stress; Mr. Lorry, similarly, places Tellson's interests above all
else, even refusing to stay with his dear friends the Manettes in order not to
jeopardise its safety; Miss Pross and even the surly Jerry, become models
of the English spirit. The contrast between the resilient, orderly, moderate
English, and the volatile, violent, anarchic French is, in fact, one of the
underlying themes of the novel and, in this sense, we may detect a smug,
self-congratulatory nuance in the very title of the novel with its invitation to
compare two cities, two cultures, two ways of life
2.4.2 Chapters 7-10
Summary: Dr. Manette successfully stakes his very high reputation among
the revolutionaries to procure Darnay's release. But almost immediately
after Darnay's reunion with his family, he is re-arrested in the name of the
Republic by a delegation of citizens. No reasons are given for his re-arrest,
but the delegation assures Dr. Manette and his daughter that a full case
against him would be made the following day. Meanwhile Miss Pross who
is out for a walk with Jerry Cruncher suddenly encounters her long-lost
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 A Tale of Two Cities brother Solomon who now calls himself Barsad. Solomon had fled England
under dubious circumstances, and had begun a shady career in France as a
spy of the ancient regime. After the Revolution he had managed to switch
loyalties and become a functionary in one of the revolutionary councils. The
selfish Barsad is embarrassed at meeting his English sister and tries to get
away, but before he can do so Sydney Carton finds them. The latter has come
to Paris apparently on official business, but in fact to find out if he can help
his beloved Lucie and her husband in some way. Carton immediately senses
that Barsad can be useful to him. He persuades Barsad to come with him to
Mr. Lorry's residence by threatening to reveal Barsad’s past as a small-time
crook in England and later as a spy for the ancient regime unless he helps
Carton gain access to Darnay's cell whenever he wishes. Carton then visits a
chemist and buys a mysterious powder. The next day Darnay is on trial again,
and we might say that the plot of A Tale of Two Cities reaches its climax in
this scene. The most damning evidence against Darnay comes from none
other than his father-in-law, Dr. Manette in the form of an account that he
maintained of the circumstances leading up to his imprisonment. Defarge
had ferreted out the loose sheets where Dr. Manette had written his account
during the storming of the Bastille and he now presents his "evidence"
to the revolutionary council court. Dr. Manette, by his own account, had
accidentally become witness to a most appalling crime perpetrated by two
aristocratic brothers. The brothers had brought Dr. Manette in the dead of
the night to examine two patients. One was a beautiful peasant woman
who had been beaten brutally and raped by the brothers. 'The other was
her brother who had been stabbed repeatedly, presumably because he had
tried to protect her honour. Both patients were dying. Dr. Manette had done
what he could, refused to accept payment from the brothers, and, in order to
appease his conscience, had written to a Minister detailing all he had seen.
Dr. Manette had been arrested late at night and cast, without the semblance
of a trial, into the Bastille. What makes Dr. Manette's evidence absolutely
damning for his son-in-law is that the villains of Dr. Manette's story turn out
to be Darnay's father and uncle. What is more, the victimised woman had
a sister who grew up vowing revenge on anyone who had any connection
with the aristocracy. That woman's name, we learn soon enough, is Mme.
Defarge.
Comment: This section sets into motion the plot that will finally culminate
in Darnay's release and Carton's supreme sacrifice. But more important,
from the point of view of the novel's overall preoccupation, is the revelation
of the circumstances leading to Dr. Manette's imprisonment. These
circumstances, which are at the source of so much of the action of the
novel, make the ideas - which have been frequently stressed through both
imagery and authorial commentary as we have seen - concrete and vivid
to the readers. Thus Dr. Manette's story dramatises in the most vivid form
the utter ruthlessness of an aristocracy that is not held accountable even
for its worst crimes. On the other hand, this oppression leads to an anti-
aristocratic feeling so implacable that it overrides all human and personal
considerations. The pattern of violence and counter violence has, it would
seem, become an almost autonomous process: it seems to work with the
inexorability of fate in Greek tragedy to perpetuate the most terrible ironies.
Thus Darnay's mother, aware of what her husband had done, had sought,
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 from her heart, to help the sister of the dead woman, but the very sister ─ Summary and Analysis
Mme. Defarge ─ seeks Darnay's blood. Again Dr. Manette's indictment of
the aristocracy becomes the means of damning his own son-in-law who
had long ago rejected the class into which he had been born. In Dickens’
representation, then, the French revolution seems to have created a topsy
turvy world where men's best intentions turn in on themselves creating the
most unforeseen and devastating of effects.
2.4.3 Chapters 11-15
Summary: The novel draws to a swift climax in these chapters. In Chapter
11 ("Dusk"), Lucie bids farewell to her husband after the trial. The next
chapter is entitled "Darkness", for two reasons: one, Carton discovers from
a visit to Defarge's wine-shop that Mme. Defarge intends to indict Lucie,
her child, and Dr. Manette shortly, as part of her scheme of "extermination"
of the entire Evremonde family; and two, Dr. Manette relapses into his
old condition as a result of the shock of his failure. The reason for Mme.
Defarge's implacable enmity is revealed--she is the sister of the girl who had
been raped and killed by the Evremonde brothers. Sydney Carton and Mr.
Lorry plan the swift escape of Lucie and her family in view of the danger
they are in. Chapter 13 ("Fifty-two"), shifts to the prison where Darnay
awaits his death with fifty-one others. He makes his final preparations.
Dickens writes of his irrational obsession with the guillotine, a fascination
with which he appears to identify. Carton enters Darnay's cell, overpowers
him, exchanges clothes with him, and has him carried out. In the concluding
part of the chapter we see Darnay successfully escaping with the others to
England. Carton's plan has succeeded. Chapter 14 describes the death of
Mme. Defarge, accidentally shot by Miss Pross while they are struggling
with each other in the rooms of Dr. Manette where Mrne. Defarge had gone
to seek out Lucie. Miss Pross's loyalty saves Lucie but results in Miss Pross
losing her hearing as a result of the gun's going off too close to her. In
the famous concluding chapter, Dickens describes the noble and martyred
death of Sydney Carton. Carton offers his support and protection to a young
seamstress also condemned to die. He recalls again the words of Christ:
I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he who- believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and Whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die.
Dickens allows Carton a prophetic vision by means of which he is able to
tell us of the future fate of all the principal characters: the good prosper, and
the wicked perish (Defarge is among those who will die by the guillotine).
Carton dies with the thought:
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far
better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Comment: The debate between Defarge and his wife (Chapter 12) is
significant for showing us the greater determination and ferocity of her
character. Dickens explains her motivation with a mixture of understanding
and bafflement. The struggle between Mme. Defarge and Miss Pross that
Dickens describes in this chapter (14) may be perceived as a struggle between
Good and Evil in which Good triumphs, in however unlikely a way. Mme.
Defarge must also be shown to die by violence - hence this somewhat comic
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 A Tale of Two Cities fight. Dickens also shows himself to be a skilful story-teller, since he is able
to create and maintain suspense about the escape throughout the chapter.
The dominant figure in these last chapters is, however, Sydney Carton who
shows great resourcefulness, mastery, and courage in planning the escape.
Dickens introduces a minor new character at this stage, the nameless little
seamstress, a kind of replacement for Lucie and her daughter, who serves to
show up the indiscriminate ruthlessness of the revolutionaries and thereby
indicts them. Dickens’ analysis of the Revolution in Chapter 15 views it
as a form of just retribution for the excesses committed by the aristocrats
in earlier times. Only magic, he suggests, can restore their previous glory.
This analysis contradicts the implications of his previous metaphor for the
Revolution as a disease that indiscriminately devours the guilty as well
as the innocent. Finally, we must note how the theme of resurrection is
extended by Dickens to apply to the Revolution as well. After the death of
these new oppressors, Carton prophesies, there will arise a new order which
he describes as a "rising from this abyss", so that, in the course of time,
there will be:
a beautiful city and a brilliant people and, in their struggles to be truly free,
in their triumphs and defeats, through 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 Dickens’ earlier diagnosis of the Revolution, we have not seen any sign
of the possibility of such a hopeful outcome. The ending thus strikes us as
a false resolution. Carton's death too loses some of its tragic force since
Dickens sees his death as duly compensated by the happy future of Lucie
and her family. His invocation of "rest" suggests Carton's weariness and his
longing for death; so we do not question the tragic abbreviation of a young
life. (You may like to consider why the last lines of the novel, spoken by
Sydney Carton, have become so famous).
Check Your Progress 3
i) How does Dr. Mannette become the unwitting means of condemning
his son-in-law?
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
ii) Why is Chapter 12 entitled “darkness”?
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
iii) Express your opinion about the ending of the novel.

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 .............................................................................................................. Summary and Analysis

..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit)

2.5 LET US SUM UP

In this fairly long Unit, we have discussed what happens in Books I, II and
III of the novel as well as looked critically at some of the specific features
of Dickens’ art. Set in London and Paris in the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, we read about how personal relationships are affected by larger
political and social upheavals. We have seen how Lucie meets her father,
whom she has never seen before, after his release from the dreaded Bastille
where he had been in solitary confinement for eighteen years. On their
return to England, while Dr Manette recovers slowly from his trauma Lucie
is courted by three men of whom she accepts Charles Darnay. Meanwhile
the revolution is beginning to simmer in France and the atrocities by the
French aristocracy impinge on the tranquility of the Manette household,
as Charles Darnay happens to be the nephew of the notorious Marquis
d’Evremonde. After the Bastille is stormed and the castle of the Marquis is
burned down his manager Gabelle is arrested by the revolutionary Tribunal.
In response to Gabelle's pleas for help, Darnay decides to return to France.
In the last part of the novel, the events are set entirely in revolutionary
France. Darnay is arrested soon after his arrival in France. Dr. Manette
and Lucie arrive in Paris in search of him. The events of the Revolution
during the "Terror" are described: the executions, the "grindstone", the mad
dances, the trials, and the general chaos. After much effort and persistence,
Dr. Manette secures Darnay's acquittal. But he is arrested immediately,
on the basis of an account written by (his father-in-law) Dr. Manette, who
had hidden it in the Bastille cell when he was imprisoned. Defarge later
discovers the written account that had been hidden earlier in Dr Manette's
cell in the Bastille. In it Dr. Manette has exposed the Evermonde brothers
as rapists and murderers. Mme. Defarge plots the arrest of the others also,
but is thwarted by Miss Pross who accidentally kills her. Carton enters the
prison, drugs and overpowers Darnay, changes clothes with him, and helps
him to escape. He goes to the guillotine in the guise of Darnay, making this
great sacrifice willingly for Lucie's sake. He prophesies a "resurrection"
of himself in Lucie's future son, and of the city of Paris itself after the
revolution has run its course.

2.6 GLOSSARY
evocation : calling up a feeling or its expression
exemplar : suitable to be copied as an example
innocuous : harmless
reverberations : repeated echoes
supercilious : haughty, scornful
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 A Tale of Two Cities to stave off : to fend off; to keep away
ancient regime : the older order comprising the king, the nobles and the
clergy
émigré : person who leaves his/her own country usually for
political reasons
expiation : the payment for a crime or wicked action by accepting
punishment readily and by doing something to show that
one is sorry
inexorable : whose actions or effects cannot be changed or prevented
by one's efforts
jeopardize : to endanger
to ferret out : to discover something by searching
travestied : completely misrepresented

2.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
i) He describes it in a complex way suggesting that not only was it
the best of times, it was also the worst of times, where wisdom and
foolishness, belief and incredulity went hand in hand.
ii) The blood wine imagery subverts the traditional religious symbolism
of wine as Christ’s blood. It suggests a bloody revolution.
Check Your Progress 2
i) Initially their resemblance is used merely as a striking coincidence.
Later we see the great significance it has in the novel.
ii) Mme. Defarge’s knitting is a symbol of fate which eventually catches
up with everyone. Through her knitting, Mme. Defarge keeps an
account of all the crimes perpetrated by the aristocracy. Therefore,
it serves as a cover for her secret revolutionary activities. It is also a
symbol of solidarity between the poor.
iii) Dickens sees the revolution as a negative event which is anarchic
and self-destructive. The revolutionaries are depicted by him as cruel
fanatics who rejoice when they kill people.
Check Your Progress 3
i) Dr. Manette had maintained an account of the circumstances leading
to his imprisonment. This falls in the hand of Defarge who presents
these as evidence against two aristocratic brothers who turn out to be
Darnay’s father and uncle.
ii) The first reason is that Mme. Defarge intends to indict Lucie, her father
and her child as part of her scheme to exterminate the Evremonde
family. Secondly Dr. Manette relapses into his old condition as a
result of the shock of his failure.
iii) For this answer you need to exercise your own judgment. You could
think of a positive outcome of the revolution or a negative one. You
can also talk about Carton’s sacrifice.
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 UNIT 3  THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
AND DICKENS
Structure
3.0 Objectives
31 Introduction
3.2 France in the Last Decade of the Eighteenth Century
3.2.1 Origins of the Revolution
3.2.2 Reign of Terror
3.2.3 Towards an Egalitarian Society
3.3 The French Revolution and the Conservative English Press
3.4 Burke and the Revolution in France
3.5 Carlyle and the French Revolution
3.6 The Aristocracy and the Poor in A Tale of Two Cities
3.7 Dickens’ Representation of the Revolution
3.8 The Revolutionaries in A Tale of Two Cities
3.9 Let Us Sum Up
3.10 Glossary
3.11 Answers to Check Your Progress

3.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit we will give you an account of:
●● what actually happened in France during the revolution
●● the ideals that inspired the makers of one of the great revolutions of
European history
●● how the conservative English press, and two individual writers -
Burke and Carlyle generated the images and attitudes that influenced
Dickens’ representation of the French revolution in a major way.
●● Dickens’ treatment of the French revolution.
After going through this Unit you will be able to critically compare A Tale of
Two Cities with both what actually happened in France and the conservative
discourse that these happenings generated. You will also be in a position to
tackle what is self evidently one of the most important topics in the study
of A Tale of Two Cities: Dickens’ treatment of the French revolution in the
novel.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
After reading A Tale of Two Cities, you will think of the French revolution
as an orgiastic outburst of violence and anarchy that hit the French nation
with the suddenness of a tornado or an earthquake. Actually, A Tale of Two
Cities is only one among many books ─ both fictional and non-fictional ─

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 A Tale of Two Cities that treat the French revolution as an event so cataclysmic that it defies all
understanding.
The first striking thing in Dickens’ account is that, he draws our attention
to the oppressiveness of the aristocracy and indeed holds them primarily
responsible for precipitating the upheaval. But Dickens’ attitude to the
revolution is not sympathetic either. He associates it with bloodshed,
revengefulness and the propensity for indiscriminate levelling. We shall
see, however that Dickens’ treatment of the revolutionaries and, especially
of Mme. Defarge is more complex, containing as it does, a real element of
admiration together with fear and loathing.

3.2 FRANCE IN THE LAST DECADE OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
3.2.1 Origins of the Revolution
The French revolution was not a sudden event at all but something that
developed over at least five years. Its origins may be located in 1787 in
the "aristocratic attempt to capture state power" at a time when France
under the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI faced irresolvable political
and economic crises. The aristocratic attempt to gain absolute dominance
bitterly antagonized the middle class which had fought long and hard to
gain adequate representation in the French Parliament. They now demanded
that issues in Parliament be decided by majority voting rather than by the
older feudal method of voting by "order".
This issue precipitated the first confrontation between the ancient regime
(the older order comprising the king, the nobles, the clergy and between the
men who were later to lead the revolution). Six weeks after the Parliament
opened --- the middle class deputies constituted themselves and invited all
who were prepared to join them as the National Assembly with the right to
recast the constitution. If the middle class was able to hold its own against
the combined opposition of the king, lords and the clergy, it was because
they had behind them the French masses — the labouring poor in the cities,
as well as the peasantry. The latter sections had, as many historians have
shown, very good reasons to be discontented with the ancient regime.
Successive economic crises, prolonged drought conditions, and brutal
governance had made the life of the large majority almost unbearable. The
entry of the radicalized French masses into the political processes of the era
pushed these beyond what the middle class had originally anticipated. The
storming of the Bastille ─ a hated state prison symbolizing royal authority
─ in July 1789, suggested that the movement for reform had swelled up into
a full-fledged popular revolution.
3.2.2 Reign of Terror
It was the popularisation of the French revolution that first sowed the seeds
of future conflict among the revolutionaries. Around 1790 ─ not earlier,
certainly not concurrently with the storming of the Bastille, as Dickens seems
to imply in A Tale of Two Cities ─ these conflicts burst out into the open.
Between 1790 and 1794, mass executions were common as a section of the
middle class backed by the urban poor and the peasantry tried to consolidate
its hold over a fragmenting nation. In the process the Jacobin regime
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 persecuted not only aristocrats but also ex-revolutionaries, who, frightened The French Revolution
or dissatisfied by the direction in which the revolution was moving, had and Dickens
dissociated themselves from it. It is this "Jacobin" phase of the revolution ---
often designated as "the reign of terror" --- that is in many accounts, including
Dickens’, made to stand for the French revolution as a whole. Associated
with widespread bloodshed, with the guillotines and the tumbrills, and
above all with the "Sans cullotes" the vast if shapeless movement of urban
shopkeepers, tiny entrepreneurs and the poor (the Defarges and the other
inhabitants of St. Antoine in A Tale of Two Cities), Jacobinisin has been
surrounded by conservative commentators in a permanent aura of almost
mythological horror. But of course this mythification was only the means of
shutting off a cooler and more objective analysis of the achievements and
failures of the Jacobins. The Sans-cullotes themselves, who have so often
been represented as pathological killers, may also be seen as committed
political activists who used violence in the interests of the "little men".
Again while the Jacobins did rule by terror (until their methods turned in
on themselves and precipitated their own downfall) ─ their achievements
have been described by one of the historians of the French revolution as
"superhuman".
3.2.3 Towards an Egalitarian Society
Finally of course the French revolution for all its excesses was above all
a revolution against feudalism and for the establishment of an egalitarian
society. It gave the world not only the slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity",
but also the idea of a secular stale where "all citizens (would) have the right
to cooperate in the formation of the law".
Check Your Progress 1
i) Briefly outline the origin of the French revolution.
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
ii) Describe the role of the Jacobins in the revolution.
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit)

3.3 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE

CONSERVATIVE ENGLISH PRESS
The revolution in France as well as the radicalisation of the working classes
in England in the first half of the nineteenth century made official England
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 A Tale of Two Cities deeply apprehensive and this created a whole discourse which sought to paint
the events in France in the most horrific terms. Perhaps the most powerful
if nameless source of propaganda against the French revolution was the
conservative English press. It created the destructively violent imagery
that was to be central to all subsequent depictions of the revolution, and
its comparisons between the anarchic French and the moderate and orderly
British were to find an echo in A Tale of Two Cities.
The most far-reaching images that the conservative English Press created
of the French revolution centred around violence. A political print of 1803
entitled "The Arms of France" features a guillotine dripping with blood,
and in a horrible variation the political cartoonist Gilray depicted a family
of Sans-cullotes feasting on dismembered bodies. The idea of orgiastic
bloodletting is of course central to the way that the revolution is depicted in
A Tale of Two Cities.
Dickens’ treatment of the revolutionaries, however, differs from the
stereotypes that appeared in the conservative press. In the newspapers and
political pamphlets, typically, the revolutionary was a withered man or
woman, disrespectful, hysterical, laughing cynically when heads rolled and
always in a "violent haste" to pull everything down. We might recognise in
this, a source for the Defarges and the other revolutionaries of St. Antoine,
but as we shall see the Defarges and especially Mme. Defarge, is treated
with greater complexity in A Tale of Two Cities.
Finally, an important theme articulated in the conservative English press,
and one that has a direct bearing on A Tale of Two Cities is the self-
congratulatory pitting of English moderation against French anarchy.
A handbill published in 1793 sums up this smug attitude. Entitled "The
Contrast", it figures "British Liberty" seated calmly with "Religon" and
"Mortality" while "French Liberty" identified with Athiesm, Rebellion and
Madness, runs through a scene of corpses.
In A Tale of Two Cities Dickens is never quite as simplistic or as crude as
this. He does speak of Paris as "a beautiful city" and of the French as "a
brilliant people", and there is an underlying admiration beneath his hatred
of Mme. Defarge. Again, although the contempt that the later Dickens had
for the mid-Victorian establishment is muted in A Tale of Two Cities, it
does occasionally break through ─ in the portrayal of Stryver, for instance.
Despite these qualifications however, a sense of relief and even smugness
about England's stability, its capacity to remain unaffected by the happenings
in France does seem to inform the novel.
Check Your Progress 2
i) How did the English press respond to the French revolution?
..............................................................................................................
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 ii) How far does Dickens’ treatment of the French revolution coincide The French Revolution
with or depart from the images created by the English press? and Dickens

..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit)

3.4 BURKE AND THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

The most influential single work against the French revolution, and one
that was responsible for transforming the images of violence, cannibalism
and unnaturalness scattered throughout the writings on France into
"common wisdom" was Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790). Written in 1790, it attained instant popularity (or notoriety among
the radical supporters of the revolution) and as Marilyn Butler says, "its
phrasing passed immediately into the English political discourse".
The most striking thing about Reflections is indeed its phrasing - the
skill with which it is able to use language to distort facts and to imbue
the happenings in France with a mythological sense of horror that defies
analysis. Burke was a rhetorician (a skilful user of language) by education
and practice and he was a very effective speaker in Parliament. He brought
all these skills to bear on Reflections, enticing readers with the magic of
his words and blinding them to what actually happened. In his reply to the
Reflections Tom Paine angrily wrote that Burke's account was calculated
"more for theatre than for argument" and instead of history or truth, Burke
gave his readers oratory - "the spouting rant of high-toned declamation.”
The distorting power of rhetoric will be an important theme in our discussion
of Dickens’ representation of the French revolution. As we shall see, Dickens
uses imagery and language to dramatise a point of view that does not square
up with what actually happened in France.
But Dickens’ response to the French revolution does differ from Burke's,
in one very important respect. If Burke reacts to the revolutionaries with
venom, he is lyrical when he speaks of the aristocracy and especially the
king and the queen. Indeed Burke's book may be seen to be an attempt to
mobilise opinion in favour of the aristocracy in England, and its ideological
underpinnings are basically the feudal notions of hierarchy and chivalry. On
the other hand, Dickens, who was consistently anti-aristocratic throughout
his career holds the aristocracy primarily responsible for precipitating the
revolution. The aristocratic Evremondes in A Tale of Two Cities are far
worse than the Defarges, and the king, far from being an object of lyrical
adulation, is described simply as "a man with a square jaw".

3.5 CARLYLE AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The strongest single influence on the writing of A Tale of Two Cities was
undoubtedly Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History (1837). Dickens
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 A Tale of Two Cities said that he had read Carlyle's book about 500 times, he visited the places
that Carlyle had talked about, and he incorporated, without too much
alteration, some episodes from the French revolution. (Dickens’ depiction
of the execution of Foulon is an example of such incorporation). But more
important than these is the impact that Carlyle's conceptualisation of the
French revolution had on the novel.
One of the basic features of Carlyle's delineation of the French revolution
was that he saw it not so much as something that could be understood in
terms of class or economics as an outbreak of incomprehensible cataclysmic
forces. As in A Tale of Two Cities the revolution in Carlyle's work is often
compared to an earthquake or a tempest. Again, the behaviour of the mobs
and especially of the Sans-cullotes is an expression of what happens when
"the fountains of the great deep boil forth" after "the mad man" confined
within "everyman" bursts through "the Earth rind of Habit".
In the French revolution the most horrific form of this elemental-release is
the act of devouring. We might recognise in this the familiar Burkean tactic
by which the revolution is sought to be enveloped in an impenetrable aura
of horror that defies analysis or understanding. But in fact the way Carlyle
uses the idea of devouring, points to a larger difference between him and
Burke.
Burke had proclaimed his support of the aristocracy in every page of
Reflections, while moving from the "mobs" to the aristocracy his whole
mode of description had shifted from the satiric to the lyrical. In The French
Revolution on the other hand, the metaphor of devouring applies as much to
the aristocracy as to the revolutionaries. Carlyle constantly draws the reader's
attention to the oppressiveness and decadence of the aristocracy, and in fact
holds the aristocracy responsible for precipitating the revolution: "They
have sown the wind", he says of the aristocracy, "and they shall reap the
whirlwind". Carlyle, however can see nothing liberating or exhilarating in
the "whirlwind". On the contrary, aristocratic oppression and revolutionary
retribution are the main links in an endless chain of violence and counter-
violence. It is this idea that Carlyle's metaphors seek, above all, to dramatise.
In Carlyle's conception of things the ancient regime devoured the flesh of
the people, the revolution then devoured the ancient regime and finally the
revolution devoured itself.
Despite the very basic ways in which Carlyle's work influenced Dickens’,
there is one important way in which the two differ. This has to do with the
way in which the two view relationships between the French revolution and
the situation in England. Writing in the 1830s when conditions in England
were, as we have seen, turbulent, Carlyle obsessively drew parallels between
the situation in France in the 1790s and England in the 1830s. Dickens, on
the other hand, wrote of the revolution in France from the safe distance of
the 1860s when, as we have seen, the turbulence of the 30s and 40s had
given way to peace and prosperity. Accordingly, Dickens seems far less
anxious about the possibility of the events in France repeating in England.
In fact Dickens is, as we have seen, much closer to that strand within the
discourse on The French Revolution: A History that contrasts rather than
compares the situations in France and England.
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 Check Your Progress 3 The French Revolution
and Dickens
i) How did Burke depict the revolution in Reflections on the French
Revolution?
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
ii) How does Carlyle's account of the French revolution differ from
Burke's?
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iii) In which important respect does Dickens’ view of the revolution in A
Tale of Two Cities differ from Carlyle's in The French Revolution: A
History?
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit)

3.6 THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE POOR IN A

TALE OF TWO CITIES
Let’s begin our discussion of Dickens’ treatment of the French revolution
by quoting a sentence from one of Dickens’ letters. "If there is anything
certain on earth", Dickens wrote to his friend Forster "I take it, it is that the
condition of the French peasantry generally at the day [during the time of the
French revolution] was intolerable". Although the peasantry never directly
enters the world of A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens draws our attention to
the terrible situation of the French urban poor. Here is a description of St.
Antoine:
Hunger - was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall
houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon lines. Hunger was patched
into them with straw and rag and wood; Hunger was repeated in every
fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off. Hunger-
stared from the filthy street that had no offal among its refuse of anything to
eat. (Book I, Chapter 5)
What is more, the suffering of the poor in A Tale of Two Cities is directly
related to the exploitativeness of the aristocracy.
Thus while the inhabitants of St. Antoine fight with each other to lap up
the red wine spilt on the street, one of the great lords in power at the court
drinks his evening chocolate with the help of four men "all ablaze with
gorgeous decoration”. The luxurious lifestyle of the noble lords is not just
contrasted against the miseries of the poor, but it is also depicted as being
sustained directly by exploitation. As a state dignitary, Dickens tells us, the
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 A Tale of Two Cities Monsiegneur had one noble idea on the art of governance that was to "tend
to his own pocket and power".
Aristocratic oppression in A Tale of Two Cities directly fuels revolutionary
fires and may, in fact, be said to actually create revolutionaries. Thus it is
the contempt and arrogance with which Mosiegneur Evremonde treats the
parents of the child whose death he has caused, that sparks off the first act
of revolutionary violence. Even more significant is the Monsiegneur's other
crime revealed late in the novel. The Monsiegneur's rape of Mme. Defarge's
sister does not just signify the oppression of the poor by the aristocracy.
It also creates in Mme. Defarge that implacable hatred of the aristocracy
that emerges as one of the most frightening aspects of the revolutionary
consciousness. The reckless exploitativeness of the aristocracy, the terrible
condition of the poor makes the revolution almost inevitable. In A Tale
of Two, Cities this inevitability is suggested in many ways, by direct
commentary, by the imagery and especially by Mme. Defarge's symbolic
knitting which anticipates the revolution with "the steadfastness of fate".

3.7 DICKENS’ REPRESENTATION OF THE

REVOLUTION
Despite recognising its inevitability and the aristocracy’s responsibility in
precipitating it, Dickens does not justify the revolution, far less sympathize
with it. On the contrary, Dickens conceptualises the events culminating in
the revolution almost entirely in Carlylean terms. In A Tale of Two Cities,
as in Carlyle's work, the revolution is above all a reaction to aristocratic
oppression; the terrible crop that grows out of the seed that the aristocracy
has sown, and as such incorporates the worst features of what it seeks to
overthrow. As Dickens puts it in the last chapter of the novel:
Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers and it will
twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious
licence and oppression once again, and it will surely, yield the same fruit
according to its kind (BK. III. Ch. 18)
In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens uses a whole range of technicalities to
paint the revolution in the most lurid of colours. At the most familiar level
he draws on the blood-drinking, devouring imagery that informs so much
of the nineteenth century English writing on the French revolution, from the
conservative pamphlets and newspapers to Carlyle's better-known account.
In A Tale of Two Cities the blood-wine imagery is introduced somewhat
ambiguously. When the impoverished inhabitants of St. Antoine rush to lap
up the red wine spilt on the street, we respond above all to their poverty
and when a "tall joker", dips his finger in the red wine and scrawls the
word "Blood" on a nearby wall we assume that a justifiable connection
is being made between an oppressed people and a bloody revolution. On
the other hand, however, the new connotation that wine acquires already
implicates the people in the act of blood drinking, and when Dickens speaks
of "the tigerish smear about the mouth" of one of the revelers it becomes
impossible to separate the notion of the revolutionary masses from the idea
of cannibalism.
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 As the novel progresses, the blood imagery is systematically de-linked from The French Revolution
its more positive connotations, such as liberation, sacrifice or the idea that and Dickens
revolution is a justifiable response to oppression, and is associated more
and more with predatoriness. In Dickens’ direct descriptions of the events
in France, blood becomes the staple diet of La Guillotine:
Lovely girls, bright women, brown haired, dark haired and grey youths;
stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La
Guillotine, all daily brought into light from dark cellars of loathsome
prisons, and carried to her through the streets, to slake her devouring thirst.
(Bk III, Ch.5)
This conception of the revolution as nothing more than a protracted orgy
of bloodletting, provides Dickens with the justification of projecting the
revolution not as a sequence of real events but as a nightmare. In the scene in
which the men and women come to the grindstone to sharpen their weapons,
Dickens is interested not in leaving behind for posterity a description of
life in Paris during the revolutionary times, as in orchestrating images that
create a sense of hell on earth:
The grindstone had a double handle, and turning at it madly were two
men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirling of
the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than
the visages of the wildest savages in the most barbarous disguise. As these
ruffians turned and turned, some women held wine to their mouths that they
might drink; and what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine,
and what with them stream of sparks struck out of the stones, all the wicked
atmosphere seemed gore and fire. (Book III. Ch. 2)
In A Tale of Two Cities, as in so much of the conservative writing on the
French revolution, the events of the 1790s are associated not just with blood
and gore but also with the complete breakdown of order, both civic and
natural. The idea, that the revolutionary legislators were in "a violent haste"
to pull everything down, was of course at the heart of Burke's idea of the
revolution. In A Tale of Two Cities this breakdown of "order" is manifest in
the functioning of the revolutionary courts. Dickens describes the jury that
tries Darnay as follows:
Looking at the jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that
the usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the
honest men. (Book III)
In these circumstances it is not surprising that the jury precipitates the most
"unnatural" of situation where the testimony of Darnay's own father-in-law
becomes the means of condemning him.
The idea of "unnaturalness" in fact underlies a great deal of what Dickens
has to say about the French revolution. It is manifest in Dickens’ frequent
references to the drought conditions which is in fact seen by historians as
one of the causes of the revolution but which Dickens insinuates as one of
its effects, in the macabre jokes that grow around the guillotine, but above
all in a blurring of gender distinctions which the French revolution seems
to have brought about. Almost all the conservative writers on the French
revolution had reacted with horror at the "desexualizing" of women during
the revolution. Burke had written with loathing about the unnatural acts of
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 A Tale of Two Cities women "lost to all shame", and Carlyle of the violent speech and gestures,
of the "manly women" from whose girdle "pistols are seen sticking". In
A Tale of Two Cities the embodiment of this kind of "unnatural" woman
is of course Mme. Defarge, but as we shall see, Dickens’ treatment of the
revolutionaries and especially of Mme. Defarge is more complex than his
treatment of the revolution.

3.8 THE REVOLUTIONARIES IN A TALE OF

TWO CITIES
On the face of it Dickens’ treatment of the revolutionaries is consistent with
his treatment of the revolution. The revolutionaries are, in fact, seen as part
of the drought-stricken post-revolution landscape – their upraised arms are
compared at one point to "shriveled branches of trees in a winter wind".
This is one of the many instances when Dickens dramatizes the poverty of
the revolutionary masses not in order to evoke our sympathy but in order
to associate Mme. Defarge and her comrades, as well as their enterprise
with a sense of unhealthiness. For Dickens as for many of his middle class
contemporaries, the most frightening feature of a revolution based on
deprivation is its propensity to destroy rather than build:
The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked
significance in it: I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this to
support life in myself; do you know how easy it has grown for me the wearer
of this to betray life in you? Every lean bear arm that had been without work
before had this work always ready for it now that it could strike. (Bk.2 Ch. 22)
In these circumstances it is not surprising at all that Dickens sees the
revolutionaries as "dark, revengeful and repressed", and that he sees the
revolution leading directly to the reign of terror.
Yet lurking behind this obvious dislike for the revolutionaries is a very real,
if somewhat frightened admiration. The men and women who gather at
the Defarge wine shop are committed to their cause, and confident about
their ultimate success; and there is enough evidence in the novel to suggest
that the Defarges are not just outstanding organisers but also capable of
surviving the onslaughts of a hostile administration.
The most striking figure among the revolutionaries is of course Mme.
Defarge. Quite apart from her personal qualities which we will discuss
later, what makes Dickens’ portrayal of Mme. Defarge so remarkable is
that it is not imprisoned within the prejudices that had determined the
portrayal of the non-domestic women in the writing of Burke and Carlyle.
Thus far from being cast in the Burkean/Carlylean mould of the violent,
"mad” revolutionary woman, Mme. Defarge is characterised by her calm
determination, her razor sharp powers of observation and her complete
dedication. In this sense Mme. Defarge's refusal to stay within the bounds of
domesticity suggests not her revolutionary perversity but her independence.
Mme. Defarge has been compared to Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's
play Macbeth. But unlike Lady Macbeth, her role is never confined to
that of a mere instigator or advisor. On the contrary, she is an equal and
even dominant partner in the revolutionary enterprise; always capable of
overruling her husband at public forums. What sustains Mme. Defarge's
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 independence is her outstanding leadership qualities. Nothing that has a The French Revolution
bearing on the revolution escapes her, and she moves about in St. Antoine and Dickens
like a "missionary", channelising the discontentment of its miserable folk
for the cause of the revolution. With his deep antipathy to the revolution,
Dickens hates Mme. Defarge for her very strengths. He sees in her
unwavering dedication to the revolution, the propensity to sacrifice all
human considerations for an abstract cause, and in her determination a
cold pitilessness. But the truly remarkable thing is that despite hating her
Dickens is still able to pay Mme. Defarge a tribute such as the following:
Of strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great
determination, of that kind of beauty that not only seems to impart to its
possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike in others an instinctive
recognition of those qualities. (Bk III Ch.4)

3.9 LET US SUM UP

Summing up then, we hope, you can now see that the French revolution was
a protracted and complex phenomenon and not a spontaneous cataclysm that
Carlyle and other British writers made it out to be. The constant comparisons
between the French revolution and a tempest or an earthquake, however,
were not innocent, since these implied that the events in France defied all
forms of understanding. Moreover, writers as diverse as Burke and Carlyle
never hesitated to use metaphors and images and heightened language to
subsume the facts and the achievements of the French revolution in an
almost mythological sense of horror.
Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities comes basically out of this matrix of attitudes,
but we hope you have noted how Dickens both draws on but also departs
from the writings that taken together constitute the conservative English
response to the French revolution.
In this Unit, we have seen in what respects Dickens’ treatment of the
French revolution differs from that of Burke and Carlyle. We have seen
that while Dickens holds the aristocracy responsible for precipitating the
revolution, he is not sympathetic to the revolutionaries either. He depicts
them in diabolical term, associating them with indiscriminate bloodshed
and vengeance. Dickens’ treatment of Mme. Defarge, however, is more
complex as he treats her with fear and hatred as well as with admiration.

3.10 GLOSSARY
Burke : Edmund Burke (1729-97) British statesman and political
theorist, wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Carlyle : Thomas Carlyle (1795'-1881) British social critic and
historian, author of The French Revolution: A History (1837)
Cataclysm : violent and sudden change or event
Ideology : ideas of a social or political group
Jacobin : member of a radical, democratic party during the French
revolution. The party drew support from the lower classes
of Paris and from a network of over 31000 affiliated clubs
throughout France.
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 A Tale of Two Cities Matrix : an arrangement
Paine : Thomas Paine (1773-1809), intellectual, revolutionary,
idealist, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Wrote The Rights of Man (1791), both as a reply to Burke's
view of the French revolution and as a general political
philosophy treatise
Subsume : to include as a member of a group or type
Tumbrill : a type of simple cart used for taking prisoners to the guillotine
during the French revolution
Underpin : support or give strength to
Implacable : which cannot be satisfied
Perversity : unreasonable opposition to the wishes of others; difference
from what is right or reasonable.
Propensity : natural tendency towards a particular (usually undesirable)
kind of behaviour

3.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
i) The French revolution was a battle between the nobility and the
common people who had been marginalized and oppressed by the
former. This conflict burst out in the form of a revolution which soon
became a reign of terror.
ii) The Jacobins were the more radical group who leashed a “reign of
terror” Some look at them as pathological killers while others applaud
their achievements as committed political activists.
Check Your Progress 2
i) The English press depicted the French revolution to be an extremely
violent event. They also pitted the English to be moderate, as against
the French, who were shown to be anarchic.
ii) Dickens’ does not endorse this view entirely. However, it does seem
that he is smug about England’s stability.
(You must make your own judgement after reading the novel)
Check Your Progress 3
i) Burke condemns the revolutionaries and praises the aristocracy.
ii) Carlyle talks about the oppression and decadence of the aristocrats
and feels that they were responsible for precipitating the revolution.
iii) Dickens’ views differ from Carlyle regarding the revolution and the
situation in England. Carlyle draws parallels between the situation of
France in the 1790s and the England of the 1830s. Dickens does not
feel that the events of France could be repeated in England.

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 UNIT 4  OTHER ASPECTS OF THE
NOVEL
Structure
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction: The Two Worlds of A Tale of Two Cities
4.2 Women in the French Revolution
4.3 The Home and the Streets
4.4 The Family and Society
4.5 The Personal and Political Dimensions of the Novel
4.6 Let Us Sum Up
4.7 Glossary
4.8 Answers to Check Your Progress

4.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit we discuss a topic that explores ''the two worlds of A Tale of
Two Cities. By the end of this Unit you will be able to:
●● relate to the different aspects of the novel;
●● begin to think critically about the contradictions that we find in a
writer's work, and
●● ask what these mean.

4.1 INTRODUCTION: THE TWO WORLDS OF

A TALE OF TWO CITIES
A Tale of Two Cities is about two worlds (or two "cities", as the title indicates).
These are the worlds of England and France, which are compared and
contrasted in the opening chapter of the novel. The two nations represent
political stability and revolution.
The opposition between these two worlds represents an opposition as well,
between two sets of conditions which correspond to England and France,
respectively: order and chaos; safety and danger; freedom and imprisonment;
life and death. The novel's structure itself is organised around these settings.
The central group of characters (Dr. Manette, Lucie, Charles Darnay, and
their friends) move from one world to another and in doing so, they pass
from one set of conditions to its opposite. Hence, England serves as an
escape and refuge from revolutionary France.
Here we shall notice more closely how Dickens’ representation of women
not only corresponds to these oppositions but, in fact defines them. Each
"world" is represented by a woman: the world of England (stability, order,
safety, freedom, and life) represented by Lucie Manette; and the world of
France depicting the revolution, chaos, danger, imprisonment, and death
represented by Mme. Defarge. In a previous unit we’ve already spoken about

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 A Tale of Two Cities the female "types" in Dickens’ fiction, and observed how Lucie Manette
and Therese Defarge correspond to these types. Here we see further how
each is made to stand for the national/cultural/racial character. Each has a
companion - Miss Pross (Lucie's) and "Vengeance" (Mme. Defarge's) ---
who more fully exemplifies the characteristics of her national type. (You
could try to identify what these characteristics are. Read Book III, Chapters
3 and 14)
The representation of this central pair of opposed women characters
corresponds to and structures other oppositions that we shall examine
in detail. The values of England, as exemplified by Lucie Manette, are
associated with the home, the family, and with individual or personal
relationships; whereas revolutionary France, as exemplified by Mme.
Defarge, is identified with the streets, with "society" at large, and with
impersonal or historical events and forces.
But it becomes obvious to us as readers that these oppositions are not, and
cannot be sustained. As the novel's opening chapter itself shows, eighteenth-
century England is not a perfect society, or an exemplar for Europe. We see
the dangers of travel on the highways in England in Book I; we see the wild
behaviour of the English "mob" at Darnay's trail (Book II, Ch.2), and at
Roger Cly's funeral (Book II, Ch. 14); we see Dickens’ direct attack upon
the English complacency displayed by Stryver (Book II, Ch.24).
Tellson's Bank, which is the microcosmic representation of England --- in
its resistance to change, its stability, its health, its conservatism is imaged
in an ambivalent way. Its building in London is small, dark, underground,
and claustrophobic (See Book II, Chapter 1). (It is of course the repository
of the wealth of the fleeing French aristocracy, and the French refugees
themselves gather there). Tellson's London building resembles the womb,
and as such stands for security. But the description also suggests a prison.
Even Mr. Lorry's service to the bank, though Dickens often praises it, can
be seen as a life-sentence. So we see Dickens’ ambivalent attitude towards
Tellson's and, by extension, towards England. Similarly, as we shall see, all
the other values associated with England via Lucie are called into question,
and their opposition to France and the revolution often breaks down.
Conclusion: Apparently, we see two separate worlds in A Tale of Two Cities.
They are also not identified as separate but are in fact contrasted. At the
same time, Dickens does not unnecessarily praise England since he makes
it resemble France in a number of important aspects. Central to this blurring
of boundaries is the role that women played. We shall look at it in the next
section.
Check Your Progress 1
i) What are the two "worlds" represented in A Tale of Two Cities?
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..............................................................................................................
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 ii) What do these opposed worlds stand for? Other Aspects of The Novel

..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
iii) What values do Lucie Manette and Mme. Defarge exemplify?
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
(Check your answers with those given at the end of this unit)

4.2 WOMEN IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

In most social arrangements, women and men traditionally occupy separate
"spheres" of activity: women's sphere is the personal and private world of
the home and the family, and their activities are reproductive and domestic
(child-bearing, child-rearing, running a house), while men's sphere is
the public world of the streets and the workplace and their activities are
productive and political (labour, manufacture, government). In Victorian
literature and value-systems, this separation of the spheres was strictly
enforced, and the place of women in the home - while it reduced and
trivialised women's roles — also idealised and elevated it. This is the place
that Lucie Manette is given in A Tale of Two Cities, in line with the heroines
of most of Dickens’ other novels.
But at times of historical crisis — like war, revolution and struggle —
women's participation in public events becomes crucial, as happened in
the French revolution. Several historians have noted that women played a
key role in revolutionary activities, especially since the popular agitations
often centered on lack of food and women were the most hard- hit by this
deprivation. The historian George Rude notes, for instance, that "a leading
part" in the agitation of September 1789, was played by "the women of
the markets and faubourgs", it was they who gave a lead to their men folk
in the seat march to Versailles on 5th October". For his portrait of Mme.
Defarge, Dickens relied to a certain extent on Carlyle's historical portrait of
Demoiselle Theroigne; and there were other well-known women leaders of
the revolution from whom he could draw for the figure of Mme. Defarge.
Thus women were no longer confined to the world of home and family,
but became actors in the larger world of public affairs. What fascinated and
repelled English historians of the revolution like Burke and Carlyle was
the violence of women in the "Terror". This seemed to them to go against
nature itself, to de-sex women, to strip them of their "feminine" qualities of
passivity and pity, and to reverse the order of things. Hence their descriptions
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 A Tale of Two Cities of women revolutionaries as shrill and their angry denunciations of them as
"monsters," "witches", "harpies", or "vampires".
Dickens follows Burke and Carlyle in his descriptive accounts. In the
account of the hanging of Foulon, for instance, we have this long paragraph
that highlights the women’s attitudes and actions:
... the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household
occupations as their base poverty yielded, from their children, from their
aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they
ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness
with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister. Old
Foulon taken, my mother. Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter. Then, a
score of others ran into the midst of these beating their breasts, tearing their
hair, and screaming, Foulon alive. Foulon who told the starving people they
might eat grass. Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass,
when I had no bread to give him. Foulon who told my baby it might suck
grass, when these breasts were dry with want ... give us the blood of Foulon,
give us the body and soul of Foulon, rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into
the ground, that grass may grow from him. With these cries, numbers of the
women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at their
own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon …
In other places, as in the description of the storming of the Bastille, Dickens
focused on Mme. Defarge's bloodthirsty behaviour (Book II, Ch.21). What
other similar examples can you find in the text?
But Dickens never loses sight of the reasons for the women’s violence, as the
passage, quoted above, shows. They have borne the brunt of the oppression
of the ancient regime precisely as women, in their domestic and familial
roles; as women who have seen their children starve, and their husbands,
fathers and lovers imprisoned or killed, (See Mme. Defarge's retort to Lucie
in Book III, Ch.3: "All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer,
in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst,
sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds".)
In A Tale of Two Cities, the very first act of injustice perpetrated by the
aristocracy that we see is the Marquis's coach running over a child in the
streets. He is completely indifferent to the grief of the child's parents, and
simply tosses a coin to the distraught father as compensation for the loss.
It is this act that sets off a chain of violence and counter-violence in the
narrative.
In A Tale of Two Cities, women are shown also as the sexual victims of the
aristocracy. The originating act of the action of the novel is the rape of a
poor peasant girl by the Evremonde twins; and it is as her sister that Mme.
Defarge seeks revenge upon the entire Evremonde clan.
Therefore, Dickens on one level seems to suggest that women are biologically
"red in tooth and claw" (that "the female of the species is deadlier than
the male" - a claim borne out by Mme. Defarge seen in comparison with
her husband). But at a deeper analytic level he also shows that it is their
"natural" feelings as women — as sexual victims, as grieving mothers and
wives— that provokes them into committing "unnatural" acts of violence
and revenge. Whenever we see Mme. Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities, it
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 is not within the home, but standing in her wine-shop, or in doorways, or Other Aspects of The Novel
out on the streets. She is not shown as a mother and daughter; even her
knitting is a revolutionary act (a secret register), not a domestic or feminine
activity. She is active, dynamic, a leader. In all this she is a contrast to Lucie
Manette, as we shall see.
Yet Dickens wants to "demystify" this awful woman (i.e. take away the aura
of mystery and inscrutability around her). He shows us the crowd of men
and women going back to their homes after the hanging of Foulon, to their
normal family relations and affections:
Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day,
played gently with their meager children; and lovers, with such a world
around them and before them, loved and hoped (Book II, Chapter 22).
Similarly, at the end of the novel Mme. Defarge is revealed as a woman
seeking revenge for her family's death at the hands of the Evremondes.
Though this reduces her stature as a political figure fighting for an abstract
cause and her impact as an impersonal force of retribution that Dickens had
built up throughout the narrative, it gives her actions a certain sympathetic
colouring.
Conclusion: Dickens’ ambivalent attitude to the French revolution - his
acceptance and rejection of it - may be partly located in his double attitude
towards the women of the revolution, and is explained by his extremely
complex depiction of Mme. Defarge as their representative.

4.3 THE HOME AND THE STREETS

The "home" in A Tale of Two Cities is associated with England and Lucie
Manette, and symbolises family affections, safety, security, order, and
comfort --- an "inner" world that is a refuge against the world outside. This
is how the home that Lucie and her father set up in London is described:
A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived was not to be
found in London. There was no way through it, and the front window of the
Doctor's lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a
congenial air of retirement on it ... The summer light struck into the corner
brilliantly in the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the
corner was in shadow .... It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful
place for echoes, and a very harbor from the raging streets (Book II, Ch.6).
Lucie is generally associated with England and her English mother, but
as the child also of a French father, she shows the French ability "to make
much of little means", as seen in her home — making skills, her use of
"many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy ... its
effect was delightful". In this house Lucie tends to her father and he slowly
recovers from the trauma of his long imprisonment. Lucie was the 'Golden'
thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond
his misery, and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her
hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. (Compare
the image of the Golden thread with Mme. Defarge's coarse, grey knitting,
and the different symbolic associations that the two images have).
Thus Lucie's predominant qualities relate to the home:She is a good home-
maker, a dutiful daughter, a good wife and mother, a very traditional
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 A Tale of Two Cities representation of the Victorian fictional heroine, especially as she is found
in Dickens’ novels.
Yet, this home in London is beset by the forces outside. Lucie herself draws
attention to the significance of the echoes and footsteps that she hears in the
house: "I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that
are coming by-and-by into our lives". (Book II, Ch.6). As John Gross has
pointed out: "Footsteps suggest other people, and in A Tale of Two Cities
other people are primarily a threat and a source of danger. The little group
around Dr. Manette is as self-contained as any in Dickens, but it enjoys only
a precarious safety".
As we see later, the inmates of this house become sucked into the vortex
of events in France. Lucie enacts the journey from her home twice: the
first time to fetch her father back from pre-revolutionary France, the second
to rescue her husband from revolutionary France. In Paris, Lucie bravely
builds a home that is a replica of her English household in the midst of
the chaos all around her, (Book III, Ch.5). But it cannot save and hold her
husband. No sooner is he released from prison than he is re-arrested and
imprisoned again. Once again footsteps signal the invasion of the world.
Lucy hears "strange feet upon the stairs", and they are those of "four tough
men in red caps, armed with sabers and pistols'. come to arrest Darnay. Thus
Dickens shows the frailty and precariousness of the "home" as a refuge
from the "world" outside.
There is yet another unsettling suggestion of the limitations of the home:
we find this in Dickens’ depiction of Darnay's dilemma. Darnay as an
Evremonde by birth and inheritance and yet hating both, seeks refuge in
England. But in fact it is the Manette household in Soho−Lucie's love, and
the peace he finds there - that lures him away from his responsibilities as he
himself realises (Book II, Chapter 24). In some ways then the home ─ as a
private retreat ─ is a false option to the world of events in which men and
women must participate under historic compulsion.
Dickens marks the differences between women of different classes and
circumstances very forcefully in Bk. III, Ch.3, Lucie appeals to Mme.
Defarge to save her husband: "0 sister woman, think of me. As a wife and
mother." "She kissed one of the hands that knitted. It was a passionate,
loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no response - dropped
cold and heavy, and took to its knitting again". Mme. Defarge insists on the
differences between their positions:
The wives and mothers we have been used to see ... have not been greatly
considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and
kept from them, often enough? ... Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and
mother would be much to us now?
Between Lucie and Mme Defarge there is the difference of class and nation
and the historical roles that these dictate which override their common
gendered identities as "wives and mothers".
Conclusion: A Tale of Two Cities is an unusual Victorian novel in so far as
it marks the limits of the "home" in several ways. Yet ultimately Dickens
makes Lucie the victor; Mme. Defarge is destroyed and defeated. In Carton's
vision at the end of the novel, the revolution passes away, and it is Lucie and
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 her children and grandchildren who endure. This resolution may not seem Other Aspects of The Novel
to us to be in keeping with Dickens’ own depiction of "the home and the
streets", but it is by this means that he "saves" the values of the home.
Check Your Progress 2
i) How is Mme. Defarge represented in A Tale of Two Cities?
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
ii) How docs Lucie Manette symbolise the "home"? What qualities of
hers does Dickens admire most?
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
iii) How does Dickens assert the values of the home finally in A Tale of
Two Cities?
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................
(Check your answers with those given at the end of this unit.)

4.4 THE FAMILY AND SOCIETY

The family is a group of closely-related individuals who occupy the
private world of the home; 'society' is a large, loose collection of unrelated
individuals who constitute the public world of community. Dickens explores
the opposition and conflict between the two, and poses the question of
human identity in that context: is one's identity to be defined in terms of
one's personal and family relationships, or in terms of one's class and social
position?
The question is central to Darnay's dilemma in the novel. Which is his
"real" identity, the name he is born to, or the name he chooses? When he is
arrested, indicted and condemned to die for the crimes of his ancestors, the
Biblical saying that "The sins of the father are visited upon the sons", comes
true. Ironically, Dr. Manette who fights hard to save Darnay as the husband
of his beloved daughter unwittingly betrays him as the son and nephew of
the hated aristocratic twins who had him imprisoned in the Bastille. In the
case of Lucie too it is a question, as Mme. Defarge points out, whether she
is to be saved as the daughter of her father or condemned as the wife of her
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 A Tale of Two Cities husband. For the revolutionaries it is not the individual's actions that decide
his/her guilt or innocence, but his/her social position.
Dickens also regarded the family as the constitutive unit of society ( i.e. that
which makes it up or forms it). Just as a stone dropped in a pond will cause
ripples that irresistibly spread outward, the disruption of the family will lead
to larger social disturbances. In A Tale of Two Cities the two major criminal
acts committed by the aristocracy (both in the person of the Marquis d'
Evremonde) - the killing of the poor child, the rape of the peasant girl - are
acts that disregard family bonds and feelings among the poor. The third
crime, the unjust imprisonment of Dr. Manette also tears a young man away
from his wife and unborn child. The Marquis does not consider these to be
serious crimes.
The possession by a high-placed person of any woman of the peasant class
was a traditional aristocratic privilege (known as le droit du seigneur). But
the brother of the raped girl, and later her sister (Mme. Defarge), question
this privilege. Speaking the new language of rights, justice and equality,
they attack the Evremondes. (See Bk. III, Ch.10). Similarly the poor man,
Gaspard, kills the Marquis in revenge for the latter's causing his child's
death, thus setting off a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence.
The revolt of the peasantry is viewed in the light of generational revolt. This
is the reason why Gaspard's crime is compared to parricide. (Bk: II, Ch. 15).
Dickens, like many other historians of the time, diagnosed the chief cause
of the French revolution as the breakdown of the old feudal order, in which
the relationship between the classes was imaged as a paternal one. "Two
revolutions, one generational and the other political, determine the structure
of A Tale of Two Cities," as a critic, observes (Albert D Hutter). The father-
son conflict that is depicted in Charles Darnay's quarrel with his uncle the
Marquis portends the social upheaval that is to follow.
Conclusion: Dickens does not undertake any deeper analysis of the large-
scale historical forces that caused the French revolution. Questions of
identity and images of generational conflict - located within the matrix of
the family as social structure ─ serve his fictional purposes adequately. He
is forced to rely upon a number of coincidences and forced connections in
order to compress this vast historical phenomenon within the novel. Thus
Mme. Defarge must be revealed as none other than the sister of the peasant
girl raped by the Evremonde brothers; Dr. Manette's son-in-law is the son and
nephew of the very men who had sent him to prison; Defarge is Dr. Manette's
old servant and the one who finds his hidden document in the Bastille and
so on. When Mme. Defarge argues with her husband that the revolutionary
must rise above personal loyalty and affection for the individual who may
be a 'class-enemy' (see Bk. II, Ch.16), Dickens is able to discredit her as
a cold and heartless woman. But the novel nonetheless leaves us with the
disturbing possibility that Mme. Defarge raises: that identities and loyalties
may extend beyond the family into that larger community called "society".

4.5 THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL

DIMENSIONS OF THE NOVEL
We are now led to ask how far the two narrative lines in the novel, the
personal and the political (i.e. the story of Dr. Manette and his family on
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 the one hand, and the events of the French revolution on the other) are Other Aspects of The Novel
integrated.
What are the connections between the two? How does Dickens use one to
throw light upon the other? Are they merged or kept distinct from each other?
Which is given prominence? We are led to think of A Tale of Two Cities as
a historical novel since its events are laid in a period much earlier than the
date of the book. Dickens is one of the great bourgeois realist novelists and
as such, as Lawrence Frank puts it, "he imagines historical situations in
domestic, familial terms". He places a group of characters at the centre of
the events in France in the last three decades of the 18th century. But their
roles are largely those of victims than agents. The agents of the revolution
— i.e. the leaders and participants, the revolutionaries — are only lightly
sketched, except for the Defarges. Dickens uses two distinctively different
narrative techniques for the two stories — in the Manette story he shows
psychological depth in characterisation, interesting plot development,
and subtle moral schema; whereas for the narrative of the revolution he
uses descriptive set-pieces (the breaking of the wine-cask, the storming of
the Bastille, the hanging of Foulon, etc.), rhetorical writing, and satirical
portraits (Monseigneur, the Marquis, the wood-sawyer, the three Jacques),
etc.
The effect of this separation results in the kind of opposition that we are
now familiar with in A Tale of Two Cities. But this opposition does not
really result in a mutual critique of the personal and the political as we
might expect it to. By way of contrast we can look at two other works that
undertake this kind of critique. In a great poem of the Victorian period,
"Dover Beach", the poet Matthew Arnold posits the love of two human
beings for each other as the only reality in the face of war and destruction. In
a novel of a later period, A Passage to India (1922), E. M. Forster shows, on
the contrary, that the friendship of two well-meaning men, one English and
the other Indian, is not possible under conditions of imperial conquest and
rule. In these works a genuine engagement between the values of personal
life and the forces of history takes place, but we do not find this in A Tale
of Two Cities.
Dickens’ analysis of the revolution is phrased in terms of a moral disease,
or viewed as a cycle of action and reaction. Such a cycle logically could
have no end, i.e. there could be no resolution for it in its own terms within
fictional representation. Dickens’ social criticism was always based upon
moral premises, and when he thought of social change it was not in
revolutionary terms, but in terms of a "change of spirit" (as George Orwell
argued). Therefore, as George Woodcock points out, in A Tale of Two Cities,
the alternatives to the political saga of "oppression and upheaval" are to be
found only in the examples of "human decency and human brotherhood"
that the personal narrative provides. Therefore, Dickens seems to suggest
that if Darnay's acute conscience, Dr. Manette's integrity, Lucie's domestic
steadfastness, Carton's heroic sacrifice, Mr. Lorry's and Miss Pross's loyalty
— prevailed, then revolutions would not take place.
It is a weak "solution" to the deep-seated social problems posed by the
revolution. Only Carton's sacrifice has a transcendent religious significance:
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 A Tale of Two Cities the endless cycle of evil can be ended only if a Christ-like figure emerges
to assume the burdens of all lesser human beings. But Carton's death is
too closely linked to his love for Lucie and to his own ennui to be a true
"sacrifice" in this superhuman sense, and it strikes us also as being more an
element of plot resolution than an essential aspect of the novel's meaning.
Therefore, critics have by and large remained critical of the integration of
the two strands of the novel. George Lukacs noted a dissociation between
the moral-political and the personal psychological dimensions of the novel,
and felt that Dickens weakened the connections between the character's
lives and the events of the French revolution. Edgar Johnson criticised the
ending of the novel as a poor display of Dickens’ radicalism: "Instead of
merging, the truth of revolution and the sacrifices are made to appear in
conflict." The personal crisis, he argues, usurps the political message. The
revolution becomes "simply the agency of death". Another critic, Alexander
Welsh, also argues that our interest at the end is made to shift to the fate
of the main characters, and ignores the larger movement of the revolution
that goes on unaltered. Lawrence Frank points to the implications of the
limits of the "family drama": "Dickens (in depicting) a national struggle as
a generational one, obscures the significance of ideology and class".
We may be dissatisfied with other aspects of the ending as well, such as
the death of Mme. Defarge. The rescue of Charles Darnay, and the family's
escape to England, have all the elements of suspense and thrill that a good
adventure story does. The popularity of A Tale of Two Cities has depended
in large part on its success as a romance, melodrama and adventure, with
the revolution ultimately serving only as a backdrop to the story of the chief
characters.
Though Dickens raises interesting and important questions about oppression,
revolution and social change in A Tale of Two Cities, he finally abandons
these questions. In the personal stories of Dr. Manette, and Charles Darnay,
there are real possibilities of connecting personal and political issues. But
instead Dickens shifts the 'focus of interest' at the end to Sydney Carton
(who has little to do with the revolution). He suggestively critiques the
conservative values of "home," family, the traditional domestic heroine, and
the state of England by drawing their limits and exposing their limitations.
But at the end of the novel he re-asserts these values by killing Mme. Defarge
ignobly, Sydney Carton nobly, and effecting Darnay's and Manette's escape
to England.

4.6 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have seen how the novel operates between two worlds:
the worlds of England and France, safety and danger, life and death, order
and chaos, freedom and imprisonment. We have also discussed how these
oppositions are reflected in Dickens depiction of the main women characters
in the novel — Lucie Manette and Mme Defarge. However, these differences
are not described in simple black and white terms but in subtle shades of
grey. This unit has also focused on how Dickens has used different narrative
techniques to develop the two strands in the novel, that is, the personal and
the political.
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 And finally we have seen that even though Dickens raises important Other Aspects of The Novel
questions about oppression, revolution and social change, he shifts the
focus in the end from the political to the personal.

4.7 GLOSSARY
beset : attached from all directions
claustrophobia : fear of being enclosed in a small limited space
distraught : disturbed and troubled almost to the point of madness
ennui : tiredness caused by lack of interest; boredom
inscrutable : mysterious
parricide : murder of one's own parent especially father or other
near relative
portend : sign of warning
unwittingly : without knowing or intending to

4.8 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
i) England and France
ii) England seems to stand for political stability and France for revolution.
iii) Lucie exemplifies home, family and relationships while Mme. Defarge
exemplifies vengeance.
Check Your Progress 2
As a complex character ─active, dynamic on one hand-vengeful and cruel
on the other ─ yet presented in a slightly sympathetic manner. (Read the
novel and see how you would place her).
Lucie is a good maker, a dutiful daughter, a good wife and mother. Dickens
seems to admire these qualities.
Given though there are limits to the “home”, Dickens asserts the values of
the home by making Lucie the victor as she epitomizes the home.

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