Wherein The Dickens Chronological Reading Club wraps up its first 2 weeks with A Tale of Two Cities, our 21st read; with a chapter summary, discussion wrap-up, and a look-ahead to weeks 3 and 4.
(Banner Image: A Collage of Several Illustrations by Fred Barnard from the Victorian Web.)
by the members of the #DickensClub, edited/compiled by Rach
What’s going on with the “profound mystery and secret” that is Sydney Carton? This week, the Dickens Club has discussed everything from doubling, to death & resurrection, to mental illness. It is a challenge to discuss the book without constantly referencing the end–which most have a pretty good idea of, whether they’ve read it or not. Yet, as Chris notes, it only grows with the rereading.
Friendly reminder! At least one of our members doesn’t remember the ending of the story–and we have other current readers who aren’t commenting–so let’s try not to include spoilers in general until the final 2 weeks of the readalong. If we do need to discuss it, a great idea is to do what Chris did at the beginning of her supplemental readings post and add a huge “SPOILER ALERT” at the top of the post or comment. Everyone is fantastic about this already–thank you!–but just mentioning it as ATTC is a particularly hard one to avoid spoilers on.
Before we get into the summary and discussion, a few quick links:
- General Mems
- A Tale of Two Cities, “Book the First,” and Chs 1-5 of “Book the Second”: A Summary
- Discussion Wrap-Up (Weeks 1-2)
- A Look-Ahead to Weeks 3 & 4 of A Tale of Two Cities (16-29 Jan, 2024)
General Mems
SAVE THE DATE: Friends, now that the holidays have passed, we have a proposed date for the Zoom chat on Little Dorrit! Please join us on Sat, 27 January, 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm GMT (London)! (Our chat on ATTC will come later–during the break between reads.) I will send a link for those whose email address I have; shoot Rach an email if you’d like to be on the list!
If you’re counting, today is Day 742 (and week 107) in our #DickensClub! Happy MLK Day! This week and next, we’ll be continuing (in weeks 3 & 4) with A Tale of Two Cities, our twenty-first read as the group. Please feel free to comment below this post for the third and fourth weeks’s chapters or use the hashtag #DickensClub if you’re commenting on twitter.
No matter where you’re at in the reading process, a huge “thank you” for reading along with us. Heartfelt thanks to our dear Dickens Fellowship, The Dickens Society, and the Charles Dickens Letters Project for retweets, and to all those liking, sharing, and encouraging our Club, including Gina Dalfonzo, Dr. Christian Lehmann and Dr. Pete Orford. Huge “thank you” also to The Circumlocution Office (on twitter also!) for providing such a marvellous online resource for us.
And for any more recent members or for those who might be interested in joining: the revised two-and-a-half year reading schedule can be found here. If you’ve been reading along with us but aren’t yet on the Member List, we would love to add you! Please feel free to message Rach here on the site, or on twitter. And for any more recent members or for those who might be interested in joining: the revised two-and-a-half year reading schedule can be found here. If you’ve been reading along with us but aren’t yet on the Member List, we would love to add you! Please feel free to message Rach here on the site, or on twitter.
For Rach & Boze’s Introduction to A Tale of Two Cities, please click here. For Chris’s wonderful supplemental materials to ATTC, please click here.
A Tale of Two Cities, “Book the First,” and Chs 1-5 of “Book the Second”: A Summary
(Illustrated by Phiz. Images below are from the Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery.)
“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, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”
We begin our narrative with an overview of the period, and of the similarities between England and France in 1775, and the echoes and forebodings of the terrors to come.
But as we are focused on a few of the “myriad small creatures” of the time, we join Mr Lorry, a banker at Tellson’s (both an English and French banking institution), as he travels on a mail coach on the Dover road “on a Friday night late in November” as the coach “lumbers up Shooter’s Hill.” There were several passengers on the mail coach, all of whom—along with the driver—are suspicious and wary of highwaymen. So, they are not pleased when a mysterious rider approaches with a letter for Mr Lorry; a guard is ready to shoot the rider on the spot—until Lorry assures them that he is known to him as a messenger for the bank, one “Jerry.” The letter simply reads: “Wait at Dover for Ma’amselle.” Lorry gives Jerry a mysterious message in return: “RECALLED TO LIFE.” The message troubles several of them, particularly Jerry himself, for whom it seems to have some mysterious relevance.
“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this…”
Mr Lorry muses on the strange and secret journey he is embarked on, imagining that he is going “to dig someone out of a grave.”
“A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this spectre:
‘Buried how long?’
The answer was always the same: ‘Almost eighteen years.’
‘You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?’
‘Long ago.’
‘You know that you are recalled to life?’
‘They tell me so.’
‘I hope you care to live?’
‘I can’t say.’”
Lorry is to stay the night at the Royal George Inn at Dover. As his mind is still “digging” about his upcoming mission, he finds that the young woman he is waiting for has arrived, and wishes to see him immediately. He is disconcerted, not knowing how to approach this delicate subject, as one who had always dealt with business matters and numbers. The young woman is Lucie Manette, French-born and about seventeen years old, with “a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look.” All she knows of the business is that there has been some new “intelligence” or “discovery…respecting the small property of my poor father whom I never saw—so long dead.”
In as gentle a way as he can manage, Lorry tells Lucie that he father, the French doctor of Beauvais, was in fact not dead—her mother, in despair of finding any intelligence of him after years of searching, had told her daughter that he had died. But Dr Manette has been discovered after almost eighteen years of being virtually “buried alive” in the Bastille prison. “He has,” Lorry says, “been found under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner.” They are to go to Paris together, first to identify her father, an old customer of Lorry’s, and then to take Dr Manette out of France.
“This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, ‘Recalled to Life’; which may mean anything.”
Lucie is in such a state of shock that her old friend and companion, Miss Pross, a strong woman much older than Lucie, bursts in and takes charge of the situation, berating Lorry for scaring her pretty charge.
In Paris, in the poor Saint Antoine quarter near a wine shop, a cask of wine shatters and spills onto the street stones. “All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine.” Then follows mad laugher, frolicking, and even one man who wrote the word “Blood” upon a wall with a wine-soaked finger. At the wine shop, we meet its owner, “a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty,” Monsieur Defarge, former servant of Dr Manette, and his wife, “a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything,” with her knitting close at hand. An interchange between them and several of the customers, all of whom are calling themselves “Jacques,” suggests the restless anger of the populace. As Lorry and Lucie enter and introduce themselves, Defarge takes them up a high staircase where Dr Manette is kept under lock and key for his own sanity, as he is so used to hearing the key turn in the lock.
Dr Manette is busily making shoes, which he learned to do during his imprisonment. He seems to remember nothing of himself or his former life, and only knows himself by the title, “One Hundred and Five, North Tower.”
“The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful…it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago…”
After some failed conversation with him and some fear that he would lash out, Dr Manette is soothed by the voice of his daughter, who suggests some recollection of his past, and of the daughter who never knew that he was still alive. He begins to weep as she holds him, and she continues to hold and soothe him while Lorry and Defarge go to make arrangements for their return to England.
At the opening of Book the Second (“The Golden Thread”), we resume our story five years later, in London. The messenger for Tellson’s Bank, Jerry Cruncher, is to take a message to Mr Lorry who is summoned for the trial at the Old Bailey of a young man of about twenty-five, Charles Darnay, accused of treason and of passing information related to English forces to a “hostile power” (France). If he is found guilty, he’ll be drawn and quartered, the idea of which makes Jerry indignant, as it will spoil the corpse. Jerry watches the trial, available in case of need for Mr Lorry.
Lorry, Dr Manette (now restored to health and life by his daughter) and Lucie have all been summoned by the prosecution, particularly to bear witness to Darnay’s presence and suspicious behavior (passing papers to others who got on board that night) on the packet ship from Calais to Dover five years earlier. Lucie testifies against her will, as there is clearly a connection between herself and Charles Darnay. False evidence is given against Darnay by the spies John Barsad and Roger Cly, who were hired for the purpose. Darnay’s defense attorney, Mr Stryver, with the aid of his careless-looking companion who is always staring at the ceiling, his wig askew on his head, turns the case inside-out by revealing the kind of men that these witnesses are, and their histories. At one point, Stryver’s companion, who had taken in more than he let on—including letting one of the guards know that Miss Manette was looking faint—tosses a balled-up note to him, and it gives Stryver the idea to discredit one of the witnesses (who implied that it must have been Darnay that was seen at a certain place at a certain time) by pointing out the uncanny likeness between two men: Mr Darnay, and Stryver’s careless-looking companion, Mr Carton.
The upshot of it is, Darnay is acquitted. After the congratulations are passed around between the Manettes, Lorry, and Darnay, Carton, who had been watching from a shadowy corner, suggests that Darnay dine at a nearby pub, and the two lookalikes—so different in everything else—make for an uncomfortable pair. Carton, who is drawn to Darnay while hating him, drinks too much and provokes him into taking his leave. Carton reflects, when alone, on why he is drawn to such a man.
“When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it.
‘Do you particularly like the man?’ he muttered, at his own image; ‘why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.”
Carton remains at the pub until called by the drawer at 10pm to make his way to Stryver’s lodgings for a night of working on cases. Stryver talks about the day’s proceedings, and toasts to “the pretty witness” (Miss Manette) which makes Sydney indignant, and the latter calls her “a golden-haired doll.” We come to witness the routine of these two men: the “lion” of the law, Stryver, and his clerk, “the jackal,” Sydney Carton—and the latter is clearly the brains of the operation, doing all of Stryver’s work for him while Stryver manages the blustering and arguing business in court. After Sydney is out all night at Stryver’s–papers strewn before him as he works out the details, back and forth between the water basin and the punch bowl–Sydney finally goes home to his lodgings, solitary and depressed.
“Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.”
Discussion Wrap-Up (Weeks 1-2)
Miscellany; Thoughts on the Intro; What We Loved
Just as this marvelous group brings new insight and appreciation to so many aspects of Dickensian narrative, both Boze and I posted on twitter/X about our most marvelous toddler niece, who is obsessed with A Christmas Carol, and Marley in particular. We have a new appreciation for Marley!
Daniel has been listening to the Simon Callow audio version–just overhearing a few minutes of this, I am intrigued!
Daniel comments on the Intro–and here again, I want to thank everyone for graciously putting up with your co-host’s enthoosymoosy for this book! 🙂
Our wonderful member Rob is catching up after a busy period:
Thank you so much, Rob!! And here’s a reminder that Rob has TWO audio editions available—a solo narration, and a duet!
Dickens’s “Writing Lab”: Characterization; the Portrayal of Lucie; Relative Humorlessness?
The Stationmaster considers the comparison between Barnaby and A Tale, the perception of the novel as being relatively humorless, and the controversial heroine, Lucie Manette:
Lenny too, sees the influence of Dickens’s previous works on this current one, particularly Barnaby Rudge:
The Stationmaster is enjoying it more than he thought he would, especially given its reputation as being relatively humorless, for Dickens:
The Stationmaster has an intriguing question:
“I read a thesis somewhere that men are deeply moved by stories about men struggling to do the right thing while enduring great physical suffering whereas women are deeply moved by stories about women struggling to do the right thing while enduring great emotional suffering. It occurred to me that if that’s true, it explains part of the wide appeal of the musical Les Misérables, which features men and women struggling to do the right thing while enduring great physical and emotional suffering. The whole package! Could the same thing be said of Dickens’s stories?”
~ Adaptation Stationmaster
Character Spotlight: Sydney Carton (“Memory”; “The Ultimate ‘Dickensian Doubling'”)
It feels a little odd to be putting a “spotlight” on Sydney, as my whole family could tell you that one of my most frequently asked questions is, “Doesn’t everything relate to Sydney Carton?”
Here, Fr Matthew considers the “ultimate ‘Dickensian doubling'” of Carton and Darnay, and the marvelous post-trial pub scene, and how the short soliloquy following it reveals both Sydney’s mysterious self-loathing, and the latent hope for a “better future”:
I respond, considering the famous dichotomies of the novel’s opening lines as being as much related to characterization as to the times; and of the mystery that is Sydney Carton:
In keeping with our ongoing theme of “Dickens & Memory,” here we have almost an embodiment. Fr Matthew points out that Sydney is the first character whose nickname is actually “Memory.” He also continues the conversation about how Sydney’s characterization speaks to those living in an age–perhaps any age–of “anxiety”:
I respond:
The “Best” & “Worst” of Times
The Stationmaster pulls back our camera lens to take a bird’s-eye view of the age, and of every age/year:
More doubling! This time, we see, as Stationmaster points out, the parallels Dickens emphasizes between the bloodthirsty French quarter and the English observers of Darnay’s trial:
Dickens as “The Haunted Man”
Dickens always seemed to write and act (towards publishers, those asking for advice, etc) as one who had a pretty high consideration of his own worth and opinion…but did he really, at bottom? Lenny considers whether he was “as comfortable in his own skin as we might think”:
On Chris’s marvelous insights and shared post in her supplement to A Tale of Two Cities, Daniel was struck by the unhappiness of the Dickens household as testified to by Dickens’s daughter, Kate, due to Dickens’s personal drama and its effect on the whole family. He also questions Chesterton’s impressions:
“Recalled to Life”; Death & Resurrection
Of course, one of our marvelous “doublings” in A Tale is that of Dr Manette and Sydney Carton. Fr Matthew asks whether this novel is “setting up an even greater theme: death and resurrection?”
As to elaborating on “Recalled to Life,” I consider its use as a “code phrase” between Lorry and Tellson’s Bank, and its thematic use. I also provide some passages from Peter Ackroyd on the subject of death and resurrection in A Tale:
On this subject of death and resurrection, Daniel comments on some of the supplemental readings that Chris provided, particularly from Gardiner and Ackroyd:
A Tale of Two Cities & Mental Illness
Lucy feels that she initially read A Tale “too early at school”; now, there is much to ponder, including the perception of mental illness in the 18th/19th century–a subject which we began to talk of in earnest with Mr Dick in David Copperfield, though perhaps we might also refer to the addiction of the Grandfather in The Old Curiosity Shop:
Chris responds, considering the wonderful treatment of Mr Dick–and Dickens’s own inability to follow suit in his own life, perhaps because of “his own mental health during this period”:
I too considered Mr Dick, and how Dickens’s instincts were usually spot-on, even if he didn’t always follow through in his own life. Ultimately, I consider how one of the great tragedies of A Tale is that of Sydney’s utter aloneness vis-a-vis those around him–with, perhaps, the exception of one who truly comes to befriend and appreciate him as the novel goes on:
The Reader in Dickens: the Freshness of New Readers; the Freshness of the Story Upon Rereading
Chris asks our group whether there are any new/first-time readers of A Tale, as she (and we all) would love their fresh perspectives. However, she also emphasizes that, as well known as the ending is, it only enriches the rereads:
A Look-Ahead to Weeks 3 & 4 of A Tale of Two Cities (16-29 Jan, 2024)
For the next two weeks, we’ll be on Book the Second (“The Golden Thread”) of A Tale of Two Cities, Chapters 6-18. These portions were published in weekly parts between 25 June and 13 Aug, 1859. Please comment below for any thoughts regarding this portion, or use the hashtag #DickensClub if commenting on twitter/X.
If you’d like to read it online, you can find it at a number of sites such The Circumlocution Office; you can download it from sites such as Gutenberg.
All the (Dickensian) Year Round 
As usual, Rach, a knockout summary of our reading and analyses of the first segment of the novel. What I find most interesting about our discussion, so far, is our emphasis on the psychology of various characters as well as the mental states and mental health of its writer. Are we breaking new ground, here?
Or, maybe, it’s Dickens who is working more instinctively and intensely with his perceptions of specific individual and mob psychology. Although he had trod this ground pretty completely in BARNABY RUDGE, he does so here with a smaller cast of characters, and spends more time on the mental faculties of individual characters–as with Doctor Manette and Sydney Carton. Moreover, in BR there is more emphasis on the romantic/sexual aspirations of either the “good” or “bad” characters, and the possibility of developing something like a romantic comedy theme, whereas in A TALE–so far at least–there is less emphasis on romance and more on mental health, and how one might care for those who are suffering from something like mental trauma or ptsd. Lucie and Mr. Lorry’s very caring and knowing ministrations to the doctor come quickly to mind, as well as Lucie’s very sensitive and sympathetic responses to Sydney who wishes to have something like visitation rights to her and her father, near the end of BOOK 2.
I must say, however, there is a VERY mournful aspect to his novel which, it seems to me, carries over from LITTLE DORRIT and extends even further into the minds and actions of the surrounding populous–in both England and France.
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Regarding similarities between “Barnaby Rudge” and “A Tale of Two Cities”, it is interesting to note that both share the same timeline. Both begin in 1775, then in each there is a five year gap (the last sentence of Ch 34 of BR reads “And the world went on turning round, as usual, for five years, concerning which this Narrative is silent.”; ATTC Bk 2, Ch 1 is entitled “Five Years Later”) bringing us to 1780, the year of the Gordon Riots.
It is amusing to think that during that five year gap Lucie Manette could have crossed paths with Emma Haredale or Dolly Varden, or the Manette’s could have engaged the services Gabriel Varden, Locksmith, or that Miss Pross could have met Miss Miggs at market, or that in 1780 while in prison for treason Charles Darnay’s neck might have been sized up by Dennis the Hangman.
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Miss Pross makes me think of a less bitter version of Susan Nipper from Dombey and Son. I love the poignant little bit of backstory Dickens gives about her brother, Solomon. It’s one of those little things that doesn’t add to the plot but makes her feel more like a real person with a life beyond the page. (Or will it add to the plot later?)
Speaking of offstage characters who add depth to the book’s world, I’m intrigued by the marquis’s sister whom he’d taken “from a convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family.” Was she relieved not to have to enter the convent after all? Or did she really have a great deal of religious devotion and was disappointed? Or was it a bit of both? Maybe she really didn’t want to become a nun, but she really didn’t want to marry the farmer-general either. In any case, I doubt her brother cared about her feelings. Part of me wishes we could have explored her character more.
More Barnaby Rudge comparisons. The relationship between the marquis and his nephew reminds me of Sir John Chester’s relationship with his son.
I know there are big Sydney Carton fans in this club, but I feel a bit cynical about his confession to Lucie in Chapter 13. If he really loves her, shouldn’t he spare her feelings and refrain from telling her about his when I’m sure he knows they won’t be returned and throwing this big pity part for himself? It seems rather selfish.
I love the quiet buildup to the revolution in Chapter 15.
Madame Defarge obviously recalls such bitter Dickensian women as Rosa Dartle, Hortense, to whom, given her nationality, she could be related, and Miss Wade. In fact, her little speech about the inevitability of fate in Chapter 16 (“Her husband’s destiny will take him where he is to go and will lead him to the end that is to end him”) recalls Miss Wade’s longer speech in Chapter 2 of Little Dorrit. (“In our course through life we shall meet the people who are coming to meet us, from many strange places and by many strange roads and what it is set to us to do to them, and what it is set to them to do to us, will all be done.”) But, surprisingly, her relationship with her husband recalls Dickensian heroines like Rose Maylie, Kate Nickleby, Little Nell and Agnes Wickfield, all of whom act as consciences/emotional supports to the men in their lives, encouraging them to be patient and not lose hope, much as Madame does to Monsieur Defarge. Check out this exchange.
“My brave wife,” returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, “I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible—you know well, my wife, it is possible—that it may not come, during our lives.”
“Eh well! How then?” demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.
“Well!” said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. “We shall not see the triumph.”
“We shall have helped it,” returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. “Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would—”
The first part of that last speech sounds quite inspiring and uplifting taken out of context. Then we get to just what “the triumph” is that she anticipates, and we realize how much more like Rose Dartle she is than Agnes Wickfield. Actually, she might be another Lady Macbeth though I suspect in that role, she’d cut out the middleman and murder Duncan herself.
I’ve got to say I’m surprised and kind of disappointed how little Dickens develops the romance between Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette compared to that of Arthur Clennam and Little Dorrit. We’re already halfway through the book and we’ve barely had any dialogue scenes between the two. I know I’ve objected to some previous Dickens books being slow paced, but A Tale of Two Cities is so fast paced so far that it feels a little undercooked to me. It almost plays like one of the “Christmas Books” except, while their main characters were technically less developed than those of the longer novels by necessity, I never felt like they were underdeveloped.
Don’t worry too much though. I’m still enjoying the book.
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Stationmaster, I think the point of the story of the Marquis’s sister has little or nothing to do with her feelings – rather, by marrying her to the rich Farmer-General the family (i.e. the Marquis) would gain an influx of badly needed funds.
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Here’s more about why I consider the romance between Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette underdeveloped so far. I can understand why Dickens didn’t depict their meeting since Lucie was going to have to tell the court about it, risking repetitiveness. But why aren’t we privy to his proposal to her or her response to it? Instead, we learn about their engagement from Barsad of all characters.
Speaking of proposals, I’m kind of disappointed that Stryver never actually proposed to Lucie. I feel like a proposal of his could have rivalled Guppy’s in comedy.
I think my favorite character so far might be Dr. Manette. He makes an interesting foil to William Dorrit. I love this speech of his from Chapter 16.
“See!” said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. “I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them.” He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, “It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in.”
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I agree with Stationmaster that Miss Pross is a descendant of Susan Nipper. To me she is a strange and wonderful hybrid of Susan Nipper and Peggotty, with perhaps a little of Miss Miggs thrown in for spice. I love it that she has “a fit of the jerks” Darnay, Carton and Stryver come to visit – her fit is representative of what she thinks of them. That Mr Lorry knows her worth is a credit to him and HIS worth – he is the latest incarnation of the benevolent gentleman (a la, Messers Pickwick, Brownlow, Cheeryble, et al). They are a unique duo in Dickens, I think (check me please), of a mature man and mature woman (I won’t say elderly) who work in tandem, quietly and behind the scenes, for the good of their loved ones. Perhaps Mr Jarndyce and Esther or Amy and Arthur are their predecessors. Mr Lorry and Miss Pross have one objective – the benefit of the Manette’s – and once they agree upon a course of action
they rarely need to discuss the mechanics, rather they instinctively understand each other and act accordingly. (See, e.g., Bk 2, Ch 6 and Ch 18.)
Mr Lorry’s worth is also on display when he does not hold back in letting Stryver know that proposing to Lucie is a bad idea (Bk 2, Ch 12). Stryver, full of self confidence and entitlement is, in fact, a buffoon – the opposite of Carton. Would that the two could be somehow melded together we might have a complete man, of course with the rough edges of each smoothed out and the better aspects of each brought forward; Stryver’s ambition and confidence counterbalancing Carton’s listlessness and Carton’s intuitive sympathy counterbalancing Stryver’s boorishness.
SPOILER ALERT: Interesting that in Bk 2 Ch 10 “Two Promises”, Dr Manette always uses the appellation “Charles Darnay”, never just “Charles” or even “Mr Darnay”. Since Bk 1, Ch 4 it has been foreshadowed that Dr Manette suspects who Charles really is and that he is having difficulty because of this knowledge. Now, Charles asks to be allowed to court Lucie and Dr Manette must begin to face the knowledge of Charles’s identity and to reconcile his personal feelings against his daughter’s happiness. By using “Charles Darnay” Dr Manette is trying to ward off the implications of Charles’s identity so as to not influence Lucie’s attitude toward Charles’s wooing – he loves her too much to interfere with her happiness.
I also agree with Stationmaster about how different Dr Manette is from Mr Dorrit. Dr Manette’s appreciation for what Lucie has done for him and his concern for her happiness over his own is the most striking difference: “You, devoted and young, cannot freely appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted – . . . wasted, my child – should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?” (Bk 2 Ch 17) His awareness that “the dark part” of his life has the potential to “cast its shadow beyond” himself and fall upon Lucie is in contrast to Mr Dorrit who, while also aware that the dark part of HIS life has fallen upon Amy, almost brushes it aside as long as Amy is available to minister to his needs.
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How skillfully the Monsieur and Madame Defarge run their business of revolution. Monsieur and Madame have a system of silent signals, some understood only by the two of them, others understood by the initiated Jaques, and still others understood by the Saint Antoine citizenry. They are committed to the long-term fight, though Monsieur needs an occasional pep talk from Madame (Bk 2, Ch 16). Madame, it becomes clear, is General to Monsieur’s soldier, the partisan to his disciple.
Madame’s position becomes clearer in this section as she moves from the corner of the wine shop ever closer to the center of the revolutionaries of Saint Antoine. We begin to see that it is she who both holds and pulls the strings of the Jaques and the tricoteuse (the knitting women), directing their agenda and maintaining morale with a steady and sure hand. Catherine Waters views this “subversion of gender” (that is, the female in a leadership position over the male) by Dickens as the means by which he illustrates the threat he sees to (Victorian) civilization – the “overthrowing of social order”. (Catherine Waters, Dickens and the Politics of Family, Ch 5, 128-129).
“Dickens was drawing upon a well-established apocalyptic tradition for the imagery he used to portray the Revolution. But this representation of the Revolution in terms of catastrophic natural history is also part of the novel’s exploitation of sexual difference to represent political conflict. The history of the concept of reason in Western Philosophical thought has been characterized by the use of oppositional formulations in which men have been distinguished by their rational capacity and women have been defined as irrational and associated with the uncontrollable forces of nature. In a similar way, the characterization of the revolutionary mob in “A Tale of Two Cities” as an irresistible natural force locates its violent activity outside the realm of patriarchal culture and helps displace political conflict on to gender conflict. . . . As a movement that is mindlessly passionate and dangerously unpredictable, the Revolution suggests the chaos associated with the idea of female insubordination.” (132)
Like the good Victorian he was, Dickens view was that women certainly could be good managers (e.g., his sister-in-law Georgiana) but they should never be allowed to be CEO’s. Firstly because they have neither the mental nor emotional capacity for leadership and positions of power, secondly their proper sphere is the Home, and thirdly because it just isn’t done. The further into the novel we get, the more Madame Defarge becomes the face of the Revolution and the further she is removed from the “feminine ideal” (e.g. Lucie Manette). For me, the choice of Madame Defarge as emblematic of the threat to the social order is quite brilliant and, I think, masterfully executed. [Pun]
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I meant to leave an earlier & more in-depth comment, but the time has gotten away from me!
To respond to the Stationmaster’s comment on the “selfish” aspect of Sydney’s declaration to Lucie: I think it is meant to give the reader some pause, until we know the whole story. Does he mean it? I think Sydney has finally come to a desperate place where he can speak of his love, assuming as he does that there is no understanding yet between Lucie and Darnay even after so much time has passed, and knowing that she deserves more respect than the bullying, self-congratulating attentions of Stryver. I think it was a kind of “last gasp” effort to communicate once and for all to her what she has meant to him, and that he will continue to be faithful to her and those she loves, no matter what, without hope for return. But I think as a reader that it is okay we feel some reservations about all this. I recall the first time I read it well, and knew only that he was by far the most *interesting* character, though whether he turned out to be honorable or a baddie was yet unknown. I think that is okay. We see that he is in a desperate state, and extremely depressed, and he desires one genuine human interaction and a communication about the one person who has been able to penetrate through to his old hopes and ambitions in the mire he has gotten himself into, or let himself be brought to.
The other note which I meant to add last week, is in regard to Dr Manette’s confinement in the Bastille, and how much his portrayal is influenced by Dickens’s experience of the prisons–especially those in solitary confinement in Philadelphia, which he wrote of in AMERICAN NOTES.
First of all, Dicken’s powerful statements against solitary confinement in AMERICAN NOTES:
“In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern Penitentiary: conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong.
“In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated once, debating with myself, whether, if I had the power of saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ I would allow it to be tried in certain cases, where the terms of imprisonment were short; but now, I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day, or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree.”
This is a powerful statement, and clearly the experience stayed so long with Dickens that he is writing about it with such power seventeen years later.
From Book the First, Ch 6, on Dr Manette when he is first released and brought to the Defarges’ shop:
“The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.”
From AMERICAN NOTES:
“[The prisoner] stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles, and answered freely to everything that was said to him, but always with a strange kind of pause first, and in a low, thoughtful voice.” And again: “He gazed about him—Heaven only knows how wearily!—as he said these words; and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange stare as if he had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and went about his work again.”
And again from AMERICAN NOTES, which is echoed in Dr Manette’s desperation for his work, especially as we move into the next sections:
“As I walked among these solitary cells, and looked at the faces of the men within them, I tried to picture to myself the thoughts and feelings natural to their condition. I imagined the hood just taken off, and the scene of their captivity disclosed to them in all its dismal monotony.
“At first, the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous vision; and his old life a reality. He throws himself upon his bed, and lies there abandoned to despair. By degrees the insupportable solitude and barrenness of the place rouses him from this stupor, and when the trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly begs and prays for work. ‘Give me some work to do, or I shall go raving mad!’”
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I’m wondering, too, how much his time alone in London while working at the blacking factory figures into his dislike (not a strong enough word, I think) of solitary confinement.
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Oh absolutely! He could approximate the feelings, I imagine, from that experience
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