A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Dickens' purposes in using 'recalled to life.'

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Jamie Mactulloch-Gair, 4lb

GENRE: VICTORIAN NOVEL

SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT

A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)

Dickens’ purposes in using ‘recalled to life.’

      It has been described as boring, dull and a sleep-aid. Is this what you think of one of the most culturally sophisticated novels of modern coursework material, and which has entertained people for over one hundred and fifty years? There are those who think of all of these words when someone mentions Dickens’ novels, and personally, I agree with them! But, I have actually read ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ (ATo2Cs), unlike other, less-educated individuals. Although I did not find the novel very entertaining or exciting, it did give me a deeper insight into the horrors Victorian people experienced due to the bloody French Revolution; the fear, the agony and the ever-lasting despair must have been disgusting, and Dickens portrays every detail!

      It has been described as a ‘loose, baggy monster,’ in the sense that it has a massive bulk to take in. It is not in one part, but rather lots of small parts (plots) sewn together. Dickens’ purpose in writing the novel was due to the fact that, he knew a lot of what occurred in the French revolution, (having been impressed by Carlisle’s “History of the French Revolution” including its causes (oppression of the poor by the rich). He saw the same sparks beginning to occur here in England, such as the deprivation of a vote for the working class, the violent treatment of the poor and the general smug attitude of the ‘better half'. The Great Exhibition (1851), a famous celebration which took place to honour Britain’s pride as an empire and a successful manufacturing nation, was a tremendous example of the ignorance that rich Englishmen lived in as to their possible fate. His plan to shock the English aristocracy and make it wake up to the near fall of its empire worked, obviously, because otherwise we might be hunting the streets for descendants of Queen Victoria today!

     

     Although Dickens supported the ideals that the French Revolution stood for, such as winning the vote and no more outrageous taxes, he did not support the chaotic manner in which the French nation went about attaining this (by slaughtering thousands of innocent people because they were somehow related to the aristocracy). The fact that Dickens was in a quantity is obvious in the tale of Charles Darnay, a man who revoked his relation to the vicious, aristocratic family, the Evremonds, and how he is ‘recalled’ to his life as an Evremonde by Madame Defarge, an angered citizen who even tried to have a nine-year-old girl slaughtered, because she was the daughter of Darnay. The portrayal of Charles Darnay (who has the same initials of the author) has a strange mixture of praise and criticism, and the novelist had ambivalent feelings towards him.

   

    All these themes of being recalled, as well as the themes such as chaos, spawned by Dickens’ opinions of the Revolution are contained within this literature. I may have not enjoyed the book, but it shines a light on the violent effects of revenge and the healing power of compassion. It puts someone into 'a far better rest than they have ever known!’ (This quote refers to the death of Sydney Carton and his noble sacrifice).

     The majority of the ‘recalled to life’ theme revolves around Dr Manette, a man who merely complained about how he witnessed the inhumane treatment of a child, and in return was imprisoned in the Bastille (‘105, North Tower,’ to be precise) for eighteen years in his ‘living grave.’ At the end of his imprisonment, a message was sent to Paris (and then on to Mr Lorry, the Tellsons’ bank worker) concerning Manette’s sentence, and it was composed of just three words:

RECALLED TO LIFE.

     

    After that part of the novel, it becomes fairly obvious the point the Dickens is making; that the theme of the novel is exactly the same as the above quotation. The second main part of the theme in conjunction with Dr. Manette is the document that Manette wrote during the tenth year of his imprisonment in the Bastille. It tells us why he was imprisoned; because he discovered a dying child who told him how he had been terminally wounded by an aristocrat after he tried to wreak revenge for the aristocrats’ treatment of him, another peasant girl, her husband and their father. The boy died just after pronouncing a curse on the Evremond family. Manette actually spoke his mind in a letter to the aristocracy, evidently not a very astute thing to do, as the Evremonde Brothers burnt the letter in front of him and dragged him off to the Bastille. Studied carefully, we could say that the Evremondes recalled Dr Manette to his actions. He paid a heavy price for his responsible and just behaviour! In his document, which is presented in court as evidence against Charles Darnay, Manette also writes of his curse on all the Evremondes and wishes for the extermination of them, their descendants and relations. Here is a key quote from his document:

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    And them and their descendants, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven and to earth.

     

     He says ‘unbearable’, which is an interesting word to use because he could not survive the solitary confinement, so he has a breakdown, which is a premonition of the suffering of Charles Darnay. In this statement he unwittingly condemns his son-in-law, his daughter and his granddaughter. In the passage of the ...

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