A Tale of Two Cities

For other uses, see A Tale of Two Cities (disambiguation).

A Tale of Two Cities

The title page of the first edition of A Tale of Two Cities.
Author	Charles Dickens
Illustrator	Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz")
Language	English
Genre	Historical novel
Publisher	Chapman and Hall
Publication date	1859
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Serial, Hardback, and Paperback)
ISBN	NA

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is the second historical novel by Charles Dickens. The novel is an atypical one for Dickens: it is shorter and more tightly plotted, and features less humour. Its central themes are a Christianized vision of resurrection, and a terror of the irrational and savage mob.

The novel is rarely considered one of Dickens's best, but it is one of his most popular. "Critics complained on publication of [the novel's] lack of humour, but it later achieved wide popularity, partly through successful dramatizations and film adaptations." It is Dickens's most widely-taught novel in American high schools.

The novel was published in weekly installments (not monthly installments, as most of Dickens's novels were). The first installment ran in the first issue of Dickens's literary periodical All the Year Round appearing April 30, 1859. The thirty-first and final installment ran on November 26 of that same year.

Plot introduction

The novel is set in London and Paris during the French Revolution. It tells the story of Milk Carton, a dissipated English barrister who redeems himself by giving his life to save the French aristocrat Charles Darnay, out of his love for Darnay's wife, Lucie Manette.

The title

The novel takes place largely in London and in Paris; these are the "two cities". In Paris, the inhumanity of the French aristocrats causes the terrible French Revolution. The reader is invited to wonder whether the same thing could happen in London. The use of "tale" in the title does not seem to indicate anything about the book's genre; it is probably there simply for alliteration.

Plot summary

More detailed plot summaries can be found at any of these websites recommended for students

Book the First: Recalled to Life

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

— Opening line of A Tale of Two Cities

It is 1775. Jarvis Lorry, an employee of Tellson's Bank, is traveling from England to France to bring Dr. Alexandre Manette to London. At Dover, before crossing to France, he meets seventeen-year-old Lucie Manette and reveals to her that her father, Dr. Manette, is not really dead (as she had been told) but has been a prisoner in the Bastille for the last 18 years.

Lorry and Lucie travel to Saint Antoine, a suburb of Paris, where they meet the Defarges. Monsieur and Madame Defarge own a wine shop. They also (secretly) lead a band of revolutionaries, who refer to each other by the codename "Jacques" (drawn from the name of an actual French revolutionary group, the Jacquerie).

Monsieur Defarge (who was Dr. Manette's servant before Manette's imprisonment, and now has care of him) takes them to see Dr. Manette. Manette has gone mad from the horror of his imprisonment. He sits in a dark room all day making shoes. At first he does not know his daughter, but he eventually recognizes her through her long golden hair like her mother's.

Book the Second: The Golden Thread

It is now 1780. French emigrant Charles Darnay is being tried at the Old Bailey for treason. Darnay is an innocent victim of the corrupt British legal system. He is acquitted when a witness is unable to tell Darnay apart from Milk Carton, one of the barristers defending Darnay, who just happens to look identical to Darnay.

In Paris, the Marquis St. Evrémonde, a French aristocrat, runs over and kills the son of the peasant Gaspard. The Marquis throws a coin to Gaspard as compensation. As the Marquis drives off, Monsieur Defarge angrily throws the coin back into his coach, enraging the Marquis.

Arriving at his château, the Marquis meets with his nephew: Charles Darnay. They argue: Darnay has sympathy for the peasants, but the Marquis has none:

"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky."

That night, Gaspard (who has followed the Marquis to his château) murders the Marquis in his sleep. He leaves a note saying, "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES."

In London, Milk Carton confesses his love to Lucie. He knows she cannot love him in return, but he promises to "embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you" if she should ever need his help.

Darnay and Lucie fall in love and marry. Shocked by the loss of his daughter, Dr. Manette reverts to his obsessive shoe-making for "Nine Days" (the title of Book 2, Chapter 18), but recovers. What has most deeply upset Dr. Manette is his discovery that Darnay is in truth an Evrémonde, but the other characters do not realize this, and the reader will not learn why this upsets Dr. Manette until Book 3, Chapter 10.

It is July 14, 1789. The Defarges help to lead the storming of the Bastille. Defarge enters Dr. Manette's former cell, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." The reader does not learn what Monsieur Defarge is searching for there until Book 3, Chapter 9. (It is a letter in which Dr. Manette explains why he was imprisoned.)

In the summer of 1792, a letter reaches Darnay from Gabelle. Gabelle begs the new Marquis to come to his aid, as he has been imprisoned by the revolutionaries. Darnay leaves for Paris to help him.

Book the Third: The Track of a Storm

"The Sea Rises," an illustration for Book 2, Chapter 21 by "Phiz".

In France, Darnay is denounced for emigrating from France, and imprisoned in Paris. Dr. Manette and Lucie come to Paris to try to free Darnay. A year and three months pass, but Dr. Manette, who is seen as a hero for his imprisonment in the hated Bastille, is finally able to get Darnay released. But that very same evening Darnay is put on trial again, under new charges brought by the Defarges.

Darnay is confronted at the tribunal by Monsieur Defarge, who identifies Darnay as the Marquis St. Evrémonde and reads the letter Dr. Manette had hidden in his cell in the Bastille. The letter describes how Dr. Manette was locked away in the Bastille by the deceased Marquis Evrémonde (Darnay's father) and his twin brother (who held the title of Marquis when we met him earlier in the book, and is the Marquis who was killed by Gaspard) for trying to report their crimes against a peasant family. The younger brother had kidnapped and raped a peasant girl, and killed her, her husband, brother, and father for complaining. Only one member of the family, a younger sister, survived in hiding. Dr. Manette's letter condemns all the Evrémondes, "them and their descendants, to the last of their race", so Manette has unknowingly condemned Darnay. Dr. Manette is horrified, but he is not allowed to take back his condemnation. Darnay is sent to the La Force Prison and sentenced to be guillotined the next day.

In the Defarges' wine shop, Carton overhears Madame Defarge talking about her plans to have the rest of Darnay's family (Lucie and the Darnays' daughter "Little Lucie") put to death. Madame Defarge reveals that she was the surviving sister of the peasant family savaged by the Evrémondes. The next morning, Carton urges Mr. Lorry to flee Paris with Lucie and "Little Lucie".

That same morning Carton visits Darnay in prison. Carton drugs Darnay and has him carried out of the prison while Carton remains in Darnay's cell. Carton - who looks so similar to Darnay that a witness at Darnay's first trial could not tell them apart - has decided to pretend to be Darnay, and to be executed in his place. He does this out of love for Lucie, recalling his earlier promise to her. Darnay's family and Mr. Lorry flee France with an unconscious man in their carriage who they believe is Carton, but is actually the drugged Darnay.

Meanwhile, Madame Defarge goes to the residence of Lucie's family, hoping to catch them mourning for Darnay (since it was illegal to sympathize with an enemy of the Republic). Miss Pross confronts Madame Defarge there. They struggle and Madame Defarge is shot and killed by her own pistol; the noise of the shot permanently deafens Miss Pross.

The novel concludes with the guillotining of Sydney Carton. Carton's unspoken last thoughts are "prophetic" (that is, they come to pass): Carton foresees that many of the revolutionaries, including Monsieur Defarge, will be sent to the guillotine themselves, and that Darnay and Lucie will have a son who they will name after Carton, a son who will fulfill all the promise that Carton wasted.

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.

— Final sentence of A Tale of Two Cities

Analysis

A Tale of Two Cities is one of only two works of historical fiction by Dickens (Barnaby Rudge is the other one). It has fewer characters and sub-plots than a typical Dickens novel. The author's primary historical source was The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle: Dickens wrote in his Preface to Tale that "no one can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr CARLYLE'S wonderful book" Carlyle's view that history cycles through destruction and resurrection was an important influence on the novel.

Language

Dickens uses many literal translations of French idioms (such as "What the devil do you do in that galley there?"), which are presumably intended to make Paris seem more foreign in comparison to London. The Penguin Classics edition of the novel dryly notes that "Not all readers have regarded [this] experiment as a success."

Humour

Dickens is renowned for his humour, but A Tale of Two Cities is one of his least comical books: Nonetheless, Jerry Cruncher, Miss Pross, and in particular Mr. Stryver provide much comedy.

Foreshadowing

A Tale of Two Cities positively overflows with foreshadowing. Carton's promise to Lucie, the "echoing footsteps" heard by the Manettes in their quiet home, and the wine spilling from the wine cask are only a few of dozens of instances.

Themes

"Recalled to Life"

The theme of resurrection runs through the entire novel; it is the first theme invoked (in Jarvis Lorry's thoughts of Dr. Manette) as well as the last one (in Carton's sacrifice). Dickens originally wanted to call the entire novel Recalled to Life. (This instead became the title of the first of the novel's three "books".)

In Dickens' England, the idea of resurrection always sat firmly in a Christian context. Most broadly, it is Sydney Carton who is resurrected in spirit at the novel's close (even as he, paradoxically, gives up his physical life to preserve Darnay's — just, of course, as Christians believe that Christ died for the sins of all mankind.) More concretely, "Book the First" deals with the rebirth of Dr. Manette from the living death of his incarceration.

The theme of resurrection first appears as Mr. Lorry thinks repeatedly of the words "buried alive" during his coach ride to Dover. He regards himself as the vehicle for Dr. Manette's revival when he passes on the message "Recalled to Life" to Jerry Cruncher. He sees the candles on the table in the inn as being buried "in deep graves of black mahogany". He believes that he will physically "dig" Dr. Manette from his grave.

Jerry Cruncher's work as a "Resurrection Man" draws him into this theme as well.

Sydney Carton's martyrdom atones for all his past wrongdoings. He even finds God during the last few days of his life, repeating Christ's soothing words, "I am the resurrection and the life". Resurrection is the dominant theme of the final part of the novel. Darnay is rescued at the last moment and recalled to life; Carton chooses death and resurrection to a life better than that which he has ever known: "it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there ... he looked sublime and prophetic".

In the broadest sense, at the end of the novel Dickens foresees a resurrected social order in France, rising from the ashes of the old one.

Water

Many in the Jungian archetypal tradition might agree with Hans Biedermann, who writes that water "is the fundamental symbol of all the energy of the unconscious — an energy that can be dangerous when it overflows its proper limits (a frequent dream sequence)." This symbolism suits Dickens's novel; in A Tale of Two Cities, the frequent images of water stand for the building anger of the peasant mob.

Describing Dover early in the book, Dickens writes, “[T]he sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction.” The sea here foreshadows the coming mob of revolutionaries. After Gaspard murders the Marquis, he is “hanged there forty feet high - and is left hanging, poisoning the water.” The poisoning of the well represents the bitter impact of Gaspard's execution on the collective feeling of the peasants.

After Gaspard’s death, the storming of the Bastille is led (from the St. Antoine neighborhood, at least) by the Defarges: “As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled around Defarge’s wine shop, and every human drop in the cauldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex...” The crowd becomes a sea. “With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into a detested word [the word Bastille], the living sea rose, wave upon wave, depth upon depth, and overflowed the city...”

To figure the human mob as a body of water is in a way to say that it has become sub-human. While Dickens both sympathizes with the peasants and feels that their revolt is the entirely predictable harvest of the seeds sown by the unjust aristocrats (a metaphor he uses repeatedly), his fundamental feeling towards the mob is one of horror.

Injustice and the mob

Dickens championed the poor, and some of his contemporaries saw him as a dangerous radical. This may be why "[i]n a famously hostile review [of A Tale], Fitzjames Stephens complained that Dickens had unfairly represented the old regime as composed of wicked aristocrats."

And Dickens frequently uses the metaphor of sowing and reaping to describe the way that the French aristocrats have brought the revolution on themselves: "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 over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind."

But to modern eyes, what is striking is the horror with which Dickens regards the mob. "The revolutionaries appear to [Dickens] simply as degraded savages - in fact, as lunatics. He broods over their frenzies with a curious imaginative intensity."

Many have suggested that Dickens wrote A Tale in part as a warning against a similar revolution in England. Orwell notes that "One ought, of course, to remember that when Dickens was writing, the London 'mob' still existed." And Dickens certainly shows the British courts as both cruel and corrupt, though critics argue about whether Dickens ultimately sees England as a better nation than France.

But it is an anachronism to conclude from this that Dickens felt that "all men were created equal." Orwell writes that in another Dickens novel, "trade unionism is represented as something not much better than a racket, something that happens because employers are not sufficiently paternal," and later says, "Dickens's views on the servant question do not get much beyond wishing that master and servant would love one another."

Relation to Dickens's personal life

Some have argued that in Tale Dickens reflects on his recently begun affair with eighteen-year-old actress Ellen Ternan, which was possibly asexual but certainly romantic. The character of Lucie Manette resembles Ternan physically, and some have seen "a sort of implied emotional incest" in the relationship between Dr. Manette and his daughter. This might help explain the odd sense of guilt surrounding the demolition of Dr. Manette's shoe-making workbench by Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry, which is described as "the burning of the body".

"The Accomplices," an illustration for Book 2, Chapter 19 by "Phiz".

Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay may also bear importantly on Dickens' personal life. The two look so alike that Carton twice saves Darnay through the inability of others to tell them apart. It is implied that Carton and Darnay not only look alike, but they possess identical "genetic" endowments (to use a term that Dickens would not have known): Carton is Darnay made bad. Carton suggests as much:

'Do you particularly like the man [Darnay]?' he muttered, at his own image [which he is regarding in a mirror]; '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 talking 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 at by those blue eyes [belonging to Lucie Manette] as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.'

Many have felt that Carton and Darnay are doppelgängers, which Eric Rabkin defines as a pair "of characters that together, represent one psychological persona in the narrative." If so, they would prefigure such works as Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Darnay is worthy and respectable but dull (at least to most modern readers), Carton disreputable but magnetic.

One can only suspect whose psychological persona it is that Carton and Darnay together embody (if they do), but it is often thought to be the psyche of Dickens himself. Dickens was quite aware that between them, Carton and Darnay shared his own initials. Furthermore, in early drafts of the novel, Darnay and Carton each individually had the same initials as Dickens, since in early drafts Carton's forename was Dick rather than Sydney.

Characters

Many of Dickens's characters are "flat" rather than round, in the novelist E. M. Forster's famous terms, meaning roughly that they have only one mood. In Tale, for example, the Marquis is unremittingly wicked and relishes being so; Lucie is perfectly loving and supportive. (As a corollary, Dickens often gives these characters verbal ticks or visual quirks that he mentions over and over, such as the dints in the nose of the Marquis.) Forster believed that Dickens never truly created rounded characters, but a character such as Carton surely at least comes closer to roundness.

• Sydney Carton – quick-minded but depressed English barrister and alcoholic; his Christ-like self-sacrifice redeems his own life as well as saving the life of Charles Darnay
• Lucie Manette – young French woman loved by both Carton and Charles Darnay; daughter of Dr. Manette. She is the "golden thread" after whom Book Two is named, so called because she holds her father's and her family's lives together (and because of her blond hair like her mother's).
• Charles Darnay – a young French noble of the Evrémonde family. In disgust at the cruelty of his family to the French peasantry, he has taken on the name "Darnay" (after his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais) and left France for England.
• Dr. Alexandre Manette – Lucie's father, kept a prisoner in the Bastille for eighteen years
• Monsieur Ernest Defarge – owner of a French wine shop and member of the Jacquerie; husband of Madame Defarge; servant to Dr. Manette as a youth
• Madame Therese Defarge – a vengeful female revolutionary; arguably the novel's antagonist
• The Vengeance – a companion of Madame Defarge referred to as her "shadow," a member of the sisterhood of women revolutionaries in Saint Antoine, and revolutionary zealot. Many Frenchmen and -women actually did change their names to show their enthusiasm for the Revolution
• Jarvis Lorry – an elderly manager at Tellson's Bank and a dear friend of Dr. Manette
• Miss Pross – Lucie Manette's governess since Lucie was ten years old; fiercely loyal to Lucie and to England
• The Marquis St. Evrémonde – cruel uncle of Charles Darnay
• John Barsad (real name Solomon Pross) – a spy for Britain who later becomes a spy for France (at which point he must conceal that he is British). He is the long-lost brother of Miss Pross.
• Roger Cly – another spy, Barsad's collaborator; he fakes his own death in Book 2, Chapter 14
• Jerry Cruncher – a messenger for Tellson's Bank. He also works secretly as a "Resurrection Man" (also known as a body snatcher).
• Mr. Stryver – Arrogant and ambitious barrister, senior to Sydney Carton. There is a frequent mis-perception that Stryver's full name is "C. J. Stryver," but this is very unlikely. The mistake comes from a line in Book 2, Chapter 12: "After trying it, Stryver C. J. was satisfied that no plainer case could be." The initials C. J. almost certainly refer to a legal title (probably "chief justice"); Stryver is imagining that he is playing every role in a trial in which he browbeats Lucie Manette into marrying him.
• The Seamstress – a young woman caught up in The Terror. She precedes Sydney Carton to the guillotine.
• Gabelle – Gabelle is "the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary, united" for the tenants of the Marquis St. Evrémonde. Gabelle is imprisoned by the revolutionaries, and it is his beseeching letter that brings Darnay to France. Gabelle is "named after the hated salt tax".

Adaptations

Films

There have been at least three feature films based on the book:

• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1911 silent film.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1935 black and white movie starring Ronald Colman. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1958 version, starring Dirk Bogarde.

In the 1981 film History of the World, Part I, the French Revolution segment appears to be a pastiche of A Tale of Two Cities.

In the film A Simple Wish, the protagonist's father Oliver (possibly a reference to another of Dickens' famous novels, Oliver Twist) played by Robert Pastorelli is vying for a spot in his theater company's production of a musical of A Tale of Two Cities, of which we see the beginning and end, using the two famous quotes, including "It is a far, far better thing that I do", as part of a few solos.

Television programs

The novel was adapted into a 1980 television movie starring Chris Sarandon.

In 1989 Granada Television made a miniseries starring John Mills, which was shown on American television as part of the PBS television series Masterpiece Theatre.

In the 1970 Monty Python's Flying Circus episode "The Attila the Hun Show", the sketch "The News for Parrots" included a scene of A Tale of Two Cities (As told for parrots).

The children's television series Wishbone adapted the novel for the episode "A Tale of Two Sitters."

Books

American author Susanne Alleyn's novel A Far Better Rest, a reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities from the point of view of Sydney Carton, was published in the USA in 2000.

Diane Mayer self-published her novel Evremonde through iUniverse in 2005; it tells the story of Charles and Lucie Darnay and their children after the French Revolution.

Simplified versions of A Tale Of Two Cities for English language learners have been published by Penguin Readers, in several levels of difficulty.

Stage musicals

There have been three musicals based on the novel:

A Tale of Two Cities, Jill Santoriello's musical adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities was performed at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, in October and November 2007. James Stacy Barbour ("Sydney Carton") and Jessica Rush ("Lucie Manette") were among the cast. A production of the musical is scheduled to begin previews on Broadway on August 19, 2008, opening on September 18 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Warren Carlyle has been announced to direct and choreograph; no cast has been formally announced, although "Playbill.com" speculates that "Many of the Florida cast members are expected to be invited back".

In 2006, Howard Goodall collaborated with Joanna Read in writing a separate musical adaptation of the novel called Two Cities. The central plot and characters were maintained, though Goodall set the action during the Russian Revolution.

The novel has also been adapted as a musical by Takarazuka Revue, the all-female opera company in Japan. The first production was in 1984, starring Mao Daichi at the Grand Theater, and the second was in 2003, starring Jun Sena at the Bow Hall.

Theatre

The book has also been adapted as a ballet by The Northern Ballet Theatre Company. It premieres on 30 August 2008 at The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, West Yorkshire. It will run for a week at that venue and then move on to various theatres around England.

References

• Biedermann, Hans. Dictionary of Symbolism. New York: Meridian (1994) ISBN 978-0-452-01118-3
• Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Edited and with an introduction and notes by Richard Maxwell. London: Penguin Classics (2003) ISBN 978-0-141-43960-0
• Drabble, Margaret, ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press (1985) ISBN 0-19-866130-4
• Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. London: Harcourt, Inc. (1927) ISBN 978-1-15-609180-1
• Orwell, George. "Charles Dickens." In A Collection of Essays. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1946) ISBN 0-15-618600-4
• Rabkin, Eric. Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature's Most Fantastic Works. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company (2007)
• Schlicke, Paul. Coffee With Dickens. London: Duncan Baird Publishers (2008) ISBN 978-1-84483-608-6

Further reading

• Glancy, Ruth. Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge (2006) ISBN 978-0415287609
• Sanders, Andrew. The Companion to A Tale of Two Cities. London: Unwin Hyman (1989) ISBN 978-0048000507 (out of print)

External links

• A Tale of Two Cities at Project Gutenberg
• A Tale of Two Cities, full text with audio.
• Complete audio book at Librivox Project.
• 'Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities', lecture by Dr. Tony Williams on the writing of the book, at Gresham College on 3 July 2007 (with video and audio files available for download, as well as the transcript).
• Asolo Repertory Theatre and Beyond the Book - Asolo Rep's community literacy initiative to inspire reading and community connection - featured A Tale of Two Cities during the 2007-08 season

Links especially for students

• Summary and study guide at BookRags.
• Summary and study guide at SparkNotes.