A Tale of Two Cities

It’s been days now since I finished Tale of Two Cities, but still having a hard time shaking it. The opening of the book – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …” foreshadows up the conundrum to come – how can a story of so much horror also be a story of so much love, nobility, and self-sacrifice?

I postponed reading the book much longer than I should have because, frankly, I worried for my emotional well-being. Having barely survived the death of Little Nell, I wasn’t sure I had the intestinal fortitude to handle a Dickens novel set during the horrors of the French Revolution. The inescapable irony, of course, is that great love/nobility/sacrifice can only exist in the midst of horror. And so it is in this show more riveting, heartwarming/heartbreaking tale of (with apologies to The Princess Bride) “true love” in all its forms – selfish, platonic, filial, romantic, unrequited.

As I expect most folks already know, the tale centers around a triumvirate of characters – the beautiful, virtuous Lucie Manett, her psychologically fragile old father Doctor Manette, and Charles Darney, an honorable young French nobleman who has moved to England in order to renounce any association with the atrocities of the Revolution. And since this is Dickens, they are kept company by a bakers dozen other brilliantly imagined and realized characters, from the coarse but faithful Crusher to the stolid-businessman-with-a-heart-of-gold Lorry, from the ambitious French revolutionary DeFarge to his ghastly wife Madame DeFarge, from self-aggrandizing lawyer Stryver to perhaps one of Dickens’ most tragic characters, the self-destructive university student Sidney Carton.

Inevitably, our young lovers Charles and Lucie end up in the hands of the Revolution, whereupon I headed for the tissue box, foreseeing the tragic end. But because this is Dickens (again), I should have anticipated that the tragedy would be a complex thing: that heroes would turn out to be flawed, that villains would turn out to be less heartlessly villainous as they may at first have appeared, and that otherwise ordinary people would turn out to be capable of extraordinary acts of courage and sacrifice. As in many other Dickens novels, the author doesn’t shy away from realistically portraying the cruelty and brutality of which human society is capable. Some of the people and scenes depicted in this tale are simply appalling. And yet, somehow, Dickens always manages to pilot us through the morass to a place where human decency ends up triumphing over all the obstacles set against it.

Am not sure why Sidney Carton doesn’t get the press that other literary greats – Gatsby, Ahab, Heathcliff, Atticus Finch, etc. – have garnered, because I feel like he more than deserves a spot in the pantheon. Be that as it may, he’s definitely earned a spot in my list of great characters in literature, and whether or not he’s enjoying the far, far better rest he wholeheartedly deserves, I know I’m a far better and richer person for having met him and for allowing Dickens, once again, to whisk me away on an unforgettable journey. show less

It is nearly twenty years since I previously read this novel of the French Revolution and I had forgotten how wonderful it is. It is more accessible for the general reader than many other Dickens novels, with a dramatic narrative full of colour and incident, no significant sub-plots and a much less extensive cast of minor characters than probably any other full length Dickens novel. The author's voice rings out strongly against all forms of oppression and tyranny, whether of the ancien regime, whose representatives such as the Marquis St Evremonde treat the peasantry with less consideration than they do their dogs and horses; or of the revolutionary authorities and their local representatives such as Mme Therese Defarge, with their show more implacable thirst for vengeance and retribution against all members of aristocratic families, regardless of those members' individual guilt and innocence for acts of oppression. It is a warning against endless cycles of bloodfeuds and vengeance, and the tendency of many political and social movements in extremis to view and judge people en masse, and not as living, breathing individuals. As powerful today as it was when first published in 1859. Wonderful stuff. show less

I believe this book has stirred my soul almost more than any other I have read. The tale of how much a man will sacrifice for pure love is moving indeed. This book takes us through the turmoil of the French Revolution and looks at it from several viewpoints, both horrifying and inspiring. Lucy Manet, her grandfather and husband are caught up in something which they cannot control and cannot escape, but this is not just their story, it is the story of the peasants of France, of the others who were enmeshed in the turmoil of that time. Dickens paints each character with humanity and fleshes them out so that they are in the room with us. Ultimately, it is the story of selflessness and love triumphing in times of great darkness.

Even though I have never been a fan of Charles Dickens, I was a firm believer in all the hype - until now. A Tale of Two Cities is surely not 'the greatest of his historical novels', and can only be called 'one of the most beloved of Dicken's stories' because it's also one of his shortest. Over five, agonising days, I struggled with this choppy, weakly cast 'classic', falling asleep on the bus and being easily distracted from my task, because Two Cities is supposed to be the best F-Rev novel ever written, but I can now officially disagree. Read The Scarlet Pimpernel instead - Orczy might not be a 'literary' author, and she favoured the aristos over the peasants, but at least she could pace a story to keep the reader interested. I think show more Dickens cribbed the major historical events straight from Carlyle, and then kept skipping merrily through the lives of his characters in a paragraph, to the point where I thought I was reading the abridged version (some hope).

The only character I cared for in the whole novel is Sydney Carton, who then disappears for most of the story. He is a wonderfully flawed romantic anti-hero who can carry off sentimental dialogue like: 'I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.' Unfortunately, the woman he falls in love with is the pathetic, golden-haired, Victorian fantasy child-bride, Lucie Manette, who is already married to a guy who looks just like Sydney, but lacks his personality. Lacks any personality. Charles Darnay and Lucie deserve each other, quite frankly - she is so good and pure and sweet, to the point where she spends most of the novel on the floor in a dead faint, and he is a nincompoop nobleman. I found myself siding with Madame Defarge, the psychotic tricoteuse baying for Darnay's blood. The only other character who didn't annoy me is Miss Pross, Lucie's companion - the battle royale between her and Madame Defarge is one of the best parts of the novel!

Needless to say, I probably stand alone in being unable to recommend this 'classic' novel of the French Revolution - Two Cities is basically the same old wordy and repetitive narrative ('weep for it! weep for it!'), interrelated characters and uninspiring heroines that Dickens is famous for. Only the opening paragraph - you know the one, 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times' - and the last line from Sydney Carton - 'It is a far, far better thing that I do, that I have ever done' - make this a memorable work. show less

I have never been an exceptionally “current” person. I often see movies way after they’ve come out on DVD, wear last season’s trends, and eat at restaurants that were posh in the nineties, but this is especially true with literature. With a few notable exceptions, I have trouble keeping pace with contemporary literature. I am constantly reading blogs talking about incredible new novels where I enthusiastically write down the names of ones that sound intriguing on my ever-growing “to read” list, but there they sit, and for many of them, there they stay. I don’t think that classic literature is necessarily better than modern. In fact, they are so different that comparison is futile. But I do know that my favorite stories, show more the ones that I return to over and over again, tend to have been written in or before the first half of the twentieth century. But to say that I enjoy all the designated “classics” would be presumptive and silly and there are some authors in whom I have relatively no interest, sometimes without reason. So to be honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to the subject of this entry, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. I haven’t read any other Dickens books since The Cricket on the Hearth in about 6th grade, so in my head were random words that I attributed to him: “musty, verbose, Wilkie Collins, bah humbug.” These were, for the most part, assumptions and associations that had little to do with his actual writing. So I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I was hooked from the beginning, as doesn’t often happen with novels from this period, that I became caught up in the action and romance of the story, and that I was almost (which for me is really something) brought to tears. But the thing that gets me, really deep down grab-me-by-the-heartstrings gets me, is the fact that, in essence, it is not a book about another time and place. It is about here and now. This is what makes classics classics, why the majority of people (in the Western world at least) know who Charles Dickens is even if they’ve never read a word: the conflicts in this novel, the characters he created, they haven’t died out or evolved. In both a sad and sometimes beautiful way, you realize how very little some things have changed. Let me explain.

The overarching conflict in A Tale of Two Cities is the French Revolution and the unrestrained monstrosities that resulted from it. Exacerbated by the ever-expanding gap between rich and poor, where the wealthy are painted as “exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding… known by its fruits of indifference to every natural subject of human interest” (131), and the poor as broken, ignorant, and miserable, the latter’s boiling point is finally reached. This eruption is seen in the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of the corrupt elite power structure. Led to a degree by the fearsome Madame Defarge, a woman with a personal vendetta against the aristocracy, the people take over the city, throw every aristocrat they can get their hands on in jail without recourse to a fair trial, and then roll out that sinister symbol of the revolutionary slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death”: La Guillotine. What happens then is chaos. Starting, as so many revolutions do, as a downtrodden people revolting against the boundless waste and apathy of the rich, it quickly devolves into a bloodbath in which blind revenge parades as justice, mob rule disguises itself as order, and all compassion and human empathy is washed away like blood in the gutter. In this environment, the good and honorable, like Charles Darnay née Evrémonde, who comes back to France to save a friend from being executed in his name (an aristocratic one which he gave up willingly), are presumed guilty simply because of their name and despite their actions, while the most savage and bloodthirsty of the “revolutionaries” are elevated.

What makes this novel interesting is that it is a warning, but not in the way you would think. It is not propaganda to promote or demoralize one side or the other. It warns against the upper classes (that incorrigible one percent!) sinking into wanton decadence and luxury while ignoring or displacing responsibility for the burdens on the middle and poor classes (you guessed it, the ninety-nine) that grow heavier and heavier. But the “bad guys” in A Tale of Two Cities are not the rich, not exclusively. The story also warns against the mob mentality that can easily become reality once the idealistic fervor of revolution wanes a bit. To put it into a modern setting, it begins when a class of people can no longer look the other way while their rights are stolen from them. Consider this context: a nation of people is guaranteed Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and yet finds the tools needed to ensure these things taken away, such as the right to choose what happens to one’s body, the right to be paid the same as everyone else regardless of class, color, or gender, the right to be paid a living wage and provide for one’s family, among others. When diplomacy fails, when the democratic system fails, what path is left to the common populace but revolution?

Charles Dickens wrote about a dark time in European history, when the poor rose up and swallowed the rich, and yet the system they implanted was at least as corrupt, bloody, and inhumane as the monarchy that kept them in poverty. I think it possible that History will label this, the first decades of the twenty-first century, a dark time in American history. In the world I live in, where American cities go bankrupt and its people suffer while the rest of the country turns a blind eye instead of extending their hand, where the reticence to infringe on the right to bear arms overrides a school room of children’s right to life, where a young man is put on trial for his own murder because of the color of his skin, I sense a revolution coming. Like Jacques Defarge, I don’t know if I will see it in my own lifetime, but I know that the seeds have been planted and the fertilizer of mistreatment and unequal representation has been laid. The way this world is turning, I don’t think it is a remote possibility anymore, nor do I hope that it does not happen. I like the comparison Madame Defarge makes of revolutions to natural disasters:

“‘It does not take a long time,’ said madame, ‘for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?…. But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard…. I tell thee… that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you” (221-2).

Things need to change. We need to start taking responsibility, not just for our own well-being, but for the overall well-being of our country, and our world. All I can hope for is that we learn from our mistakes, that we remember the blood in the streets of the French and American and Mexican and countless other revolutions. Rights are not won, not truly and not for long, with violence and hatred and vengeance. The Madame Defarges of the world cannot be the paragons of our revolutionary ideals, but neither can the laconic and apathetic Monseigneurs. It must be the people, but the people must maintain in their hearts the knowledge of their equal humanity and their capability for compassion and empathy. That is the only way that there can be hope for a better future.

For more book reviews (err... book musings?), visit my blog For Love and Allegory at http://www.forloveandallegory.wordpress.com/ show less

Who doesn't love Dickens? I sink into his novels, suspend all disbelief, and consume his characters like they were made of chocolate. I remember my first reading of this novel, thinking it was the most romantic story ever written. It still has that element of romance, but as a more mature reader, I find it is the growth of the character of Sydney Carton that appeals to me. His realization that his life is worth more sacrificed for others than it is ever to be lived out to its natural end seems to me one of the hardest realizations a person could ever be required to face.

The juxtaposition of good and evil, the irony of having the decent man punished for his father and uncle's trespasses, the madness and injustice of mob rule are all show more elements we can find in our current society. That the revolution grows from understandable and justified grievance is finally drowned in the wholesale slaughter of innocents, making those seeking redress no better than those who preceded them.

I loved revisiting this book and was surprised how many details and plot twists I had lost in the passage of time. I have resolved to re-read the works of Dickens over the next year, so many of them not having been read since I was very young. show less

This is one of my top ten and Sydney Carton (with Atticus Finch) is one of my two favourite literary characters of all time. What a beautiful story of true love. (The history doesn't hurt in my books either ;)).

***SPOILER ALERT*** I FORBID you from continuing if you haven't finished it yet!


Sydney's heartbreaking, heartwarming sacrifice at the end of the novel is literature's best example of true love. Unfortunately, in modern literature true love usually goes along the lines of, "Because I love you so much, I will do anything to be with you" (including, y'know, kill your spouse/take you against your will/manipulate you/generally be a bad person and make you miserable); here, Dickens shows an example of, "Because I love you so much, I show more will do anything to promote your happiness." Thus, Sidney's sacrifice (to save Lucie's husband Charles, for all you terrible people who ignored the spoiler warning) is so much more meaningful and beautiful than all the romantic heroes and heroines who have died to save their loved one. Sydney demonstrates a kind of love which is truly selfless--not a love which is necessarily necessary (sorry) in every relationship, but which is beautiful when we get to see it. Sidney's my hero, and one of the reasons that I love this book so much that I feel that it's part of my soul is because it changed the way I think about love. (And that speech at the end [I know it by heart] is one of the most beautiful passages of prose I have ever encountered. This is one of the few books that can actually make me cry.)
And a thought for people who will be disconsolate about Sidney until the day they die (stop looking at me, people!):
Sidney's death was not tragic. His life was. The tragedy of death is the loss of potential--the inability to do and accomplish all the things one could have. Sidney lived in a state like that all his life. He was of excellent abilities, but his inhibitions stopped him from achieving what he really could have. That is tragic.
But in his death, he did accomplish--he saved Charles, He brought Lucie joy, and he allowed all those children and generations to exist. He died happy, and noble, and believing he wasd going to Paradise.
As well, his death is related to the theme of transcendence (one very close to my heart, and another reason I love this book so much.) Although I am not Christian, there is so much pathos in the Biblical verse to which Sydney clings so tightly: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.." This verse--and this theme--say that death is not the greatest evil--to live evilly is; and life is not the greatest good--to do good is.
Okay, you're right. it's not completely satisfying either. The best would have been for him to do something with his life (inspired by Lucie, maybe?)--but Dickens makes it pretty clear that wasn't going to happen. This was the next best option.


***ALL YOU DEPRIVED PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T READ AToTC YET CAN KEEP READING NOW***

I'd just like to add how much I love Dickens' humour (e.g. knitting/still knitting). Many critics have argued that this book doesn't have the hilarious, caricature-like characters of, say, A Christmas Carol, but hello Madame Defarge, The Vengeance, even the Manettes.

And, despite the historical inaccuracy, C.D. does a lovely job portraying the nuanced mess that was the French Revolution--he starts with Monseigneur to get you devoutly on the side of
the proletariat, and then shows the cruelty of them, too, through the Vengeance, the Defarges, and Charles's/Sydney's victimhood, thus portraying the nuanced-ness (sorry) of good and evil, and of that situation. show less