How Dickens’ Tale of the French Revolution Had Me Floored! January 31, 2011

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

This one has been more than a week coming! When I first finished A Tale of Two Cities I was so fired up and had so much I’d wanted to say. The passion has cooled down somewhat, but I hope to recapture my thoughts and feelings on the book.

I went into this novel with mixed feelings. One – this was a story by Dickens. I’d read Oliver Twist and Great Expectations  and had been impressed by neither. I didn’t care much for Dickens’ style. This is the reason it took me five or six years to finally pick this book from off my shelf and read it. Two – this was about the French Revolution. A good point, that. I’m interested in anything to do with this era. However, three – my mom had told me how it ended and I wasn’t too keen on reading something that was sad. I overcame my feelings for point three sometime ago, was still into point two, and finally decided to give point one just one more chance.

The result? It was simply beautiful!

I don’t know that I would like to read Dickens again (except for re-reading this novel sometime), but I began to appreciate his skill. Actually, admire him for his skill.

The story…isn’t simple. It has a lot of twists and turns that to try and summarise it here would really give away a great deal. I will, thus, just stick to saying, it’s a story about a French doctor and his beautiful, sweet-natured daughter, the people who love them, and the small part they all play during the course of the French Revolution. Personally, for me, the main story itself didn’t do much, except for its end, and that for different reasons than what most who have read the book would think. (I shall elaborate on this point a little later). What I loved about this book was the unbiased portrayal of the mood and atmosphere of the French Revolution. As G K Chesterton** says:

Dickens’s French Revolution is probably more like the real French Revolution than Carlyle’s.

To better understand the above quote, I would like to point out, that Charles Dickens new nothing about the French Revolution until Carlyle had written its history. Dickens’ only source was Carlyle’s account. And yet he is supposed to have captured the spirit of the revolution way more clearly and more accurately than the historian ever did.

It is necessary thus to insist that Dickens never understood the Continent, because only then can we appreciate the really remarkable thing he did in A Tale of Two Cities. It is necessary to feel, first of all, the fact that to him London was the centre of the universe. He did not understand at all the real sense in which Paris is the capital of Europe. He had never realized that all roads led to Rome. He had never felt (as an Englishman can feel) that he was an Athenian before he was a Londoner. Yet with everything against him he did this astonishing thing. He wrote a book about two cities, one of which he understood, the other he did not understand. And his description of the city he did not know is almost better than his description of the city he did know.

What then was his source? His inspiration?



The Storming of the Bastille



…the fact of his dependence upon another of the great writers of the Victorian era. And it is in connection with this that we can best see the truth of which I have been speaking; the truth that his actual ignorance of France went with amazing intuitive perception of the truth about it. It is here that he has most clearly the plain mark of the man of genius; that he can understand what he does not understand.

If this is indeed true, that Dickens had no idea about the details of the French Revolution, until he read Carlyle’s history (and Carlyle was said to have given a detailed yet biased account of the Revolution. He apparently never believed in it.), then he is truly a genius to have woven this amazing tapestry on the same.

I love the way (and I know I am not alone or among the few in this) the novel begins:

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 had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (p.1)

Apart from the way he handled the background and setting for his story, I enjoyed some of Dickens’ literary devices. I was amazed at how detailed his description was – not that it would go on for pages, but that it highlighted such tiny aspects as the slant of an eyebrow, a ray of light, the position of a hand. It is all done with such finesse and the directions of a film script. I also loved his rhetorical phrasing, an example of which can be found here (apart from the above quote):

Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering; the men were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or lingering up and down the room.

In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and disgrace, the new comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning unreality of his long unread ride, was, their at once rising to receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.

So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in the coming there. (p.250)

Isn’t this passage so achingly beautiful? It is so full of pathos and so filled with gentle irony. But, I think also, with much sympathy, for not all of the aristocracy were responsible for the state of the common Frenchman, though, perhaps, unwittingly. However, it was the wickedness of a few, as represented by the old Marquis of Evremonde, that led to the Reign of Terror. By the end of the novel one sees how much out of control the revolution had gone with the blood-thirsty madness of the likes of Madame Defarge and her entourage, and the death of not only the innocent once-rich, but the poor as well. As I mentioned before, it wasn’t the main story itself that moved me, but the era in which it takes place. I shed my first tears when I read of the young peasant girl going to her death for something she didn’t do. Her words:

‘I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have done nothing. I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so much good to us poor, will profit by my death; but I do not know how that can be, Citizen Evremonde. Such a poor weak little creature!’ (p.349)

I shed my second and last set of tears for this:

‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, that I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.’ (p.370)

These tears, though, were of a sort of relief and happiness for the man who found no joy (except one) in his earthly life, but was able to redeem himself so wonderfully at the end.

I had been speaking of Dickens’ writing style before I went down another road: he used a great deal of personification. And he picks out interesting quirks in each of his characters that we begin to know them by. These are little things, but they made the reading a pleasure. However, two things about his writing that I truly dislike were ever present here as well. One – his tendency to have a rather intrusive narrator’s voice. I dislike the fact that it distances you from the story, makes you feel more like an outsider looking in through a window of a house where interesting things are happening that you so much want to be a part of. This ‘intruding narrator’ seems to take a back seat in the third part of the book, though, which was probably why the last section of the novel is the most interesting (apart from its being involved solely with the revolution). Two – it has always annoyed me, the way everything falls together way too perfectly in terms of the plot line, in Dickens’ novels. Someone once used the word saccarine to describe Dickens’ works and I’ll have to agree. It’s like reading a Daniel Steele novel, I presume.

Yet, there are some memorable characters from this novel, of which I would like to mention three – The Marquis Evremond, Madame Defarge and Sydney Carton. I’ll be writing up a separate post for this mini-characterisation. At this point, I would like to mention how there is no one main character in this book. The whole novel is carried by the intricate plot.

I shall stop here. I had no idea, when I began this, that it was going to turn out so long!

If you have read A Tale of Two Cities I would love to hear if you agree with what I have said or not. What was your opinion of the novel? How has it affected your opinion about Dickens? If you haven’t read this novel, would you give it a try? I would highly recommend it!

If you would like a crash course in the French Revolution before you get started on the book, or even after you have finished it, here’s a good, succinct article for you to peruse.

A Tale of Two Cities published by Dent Dutton, printed 1979
** Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens by G K Chesterton

Character Connection: Puzzling over Mr Lorry January 7, 2011

Character Connection is hosted by The Introverted Reader every Thursday. Click on image to go to host page.

I might only have just begun reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and so have come across only four characters so far. However, I find myself quite intrigued by the character of Jarvis Lorry. By profession and initial personal characteristics, we see that he is an English banker, quite dedicated to business and doing it well. Yet, right from the moment he mentions the words “recalled to life” he becomes a character of intrigue. The messenger who brings him the message that provokes these strange words, ponders over them in bewilderment and then with misgiving. And one tends to feel the way he does. What does a stalwart banker have to do with strange words in the misty darkness of the night?

Mr Lorry is on his way to meet his next client. But for some reason or the other, this

Mr Lorry carries a message.

clientappeals to a side of him that isn’t all business. We see that Mr Lorry is nervous about emotions. He likes to work mechanically on a mission because he feels extremely uncomfortable with his emotions – emotions of any kind be it kindness, pity and the like. His key phrase is – a matter of business. He has some important, life-changing news for his client. One that is bound to be very emotional for her. And reminding himself constantly that it is all a matter of business he relays his news with not much empathy for the feelings of his young client. However, we can see that he is disturbed by her distress, and he does not want her to suffer. Yet, since all he knows and is comfortable with is business, he is unable to do much for her.

Our  interest in him grows, though when we realise that his dealings with this young woman have been of a personal nature in the distant past. This Englishman banker has some sort of tie-in with this young lady’s French father who has been presumed dead. After years there is news of the latter and this unlikely pair is to make a trip from Dover across the English channel to see if all heard is true.

I am eager to know what role Mr Lorry really plays in this story.

Setting the stage: book one of “A Tale of Two Cities” January 6, 2011

"The Wine Shop" - a cask of wine spilt on a street

I finished reading the first book of A Tale of Two Cities, only yesterday. Aye, I am making rather slow progress, not because of the novel itself, but because of hectic demands in my life. But slowness aside, I have really enjoyed what I’ve read so far. Perhaps I have forgotten how Dickens writes or perhaps it is the very air of romantic pathos that the French Revolution evokes, that my expectations for this particular book are rather different from what my expectations of Oliver Twist and Great Expectations were. Having heard so much about Sydney Carton (my mom swoons at mention of his name) I guess I’d been expecting to be introduced to him right from the start. However, we are introduced to a banker, albeit with a shroud of mystery.

The first book of this novel has only six chapters, but at the end of them I am so full of questions. Who is this young girl? What had her father done to become what he is now? What connection has an English banker to a wither old Frenchman? Why had he been in prison and why has he been “recalled to life” now? I am absolutely excited about finding the answers to these questions. But while Dickens has done well to keep us all in suspense about his characters and what they are involved, I think the way he has introduce and contrasted France and England is amazing. One begins to see, with a picture painted so perfectly in words, why the French Revolution had to happen.

In the introduction given by G K Chesterton, he says: Dickens’ French Revolution is probably more like the real French Revolution than Carlyle’s. Although, I haven’t read much on the French Revolution save for watching a couple of movies and reading the Scarlet Pimpernel series, I can tell what Chesterton means. Book 1 functions as a prologue, not just for the story that is to follow, but as a window into the causes five years before the start of the French Revolution. The very comparison Dickens makes between England and France during the late 178os fills you with foreboding. While, of the two, England is the one suffering from a surge of theft on the highways and unsafe streets, it is the suffering quietness of the French farmer and the woodsman that makes you realise that the revolution was simply inevitable in the latter country.

In England:

…there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light…

In France:

 It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread…

I love the description of the state of France which I have put down here only in part. The suffering was so great and the silence even greater. But still waters run deep, and in the breast of the common man rebellion was brewing.

At this point I would like to make note of a couple of descriptive quotes that I loved. Hunger…perhaps the major cause for the revolution.

It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker’s shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.

The description wrings one’s heart. But what followed, while started out in a spirit of liberty turned out to be nothing but a massacre. Thus, I have rather mixed feelings over the consequences of the above quoted state of the people of France. I shall leave it at that.

The other quote that caught my attention was a description of old Manette’s voice. There is something about Dickens’ writing that works very well as stage directions. His details are so minute that he even describes the movement and positioning of hands. I could see every single thing in my mind’s eyes so clearly drawn out by Dickens that I’m sure all of us would have almost the same mind-vision while reading this tale. His description of Manette’s voice and the reasons behind it was, to me, reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo.

 The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though

Manette

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.

With this quote I’ll end this post.

On starting out with a “Tale of Two Cities” January 2, 2011

It is only in the past year or two that I began reading prefaces and forwards and introductions to novels and anthologies. I don’t why it never occurred to me to read them before…but perhaps I thought they would be a dead bore and that I didn’t need to know. I’ve realised how much they can really help with understanding what you’re reading better!

In my copy of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, There is an introduction to the novel by G K Chesterton. Here are a few interesting things I’ve learnt.

1. Cockney was a term once used to refer to a person who is city-bred and who loves the city. Apparently, Dickens was one of those. These days the term has a different, rather negative meaning, or so Chesterton says.
2. Dickens loved London and didn’t know much about the other major cities in Europe. It would seem that while many other men of his day who took they Tour of Europe and enjoyed themselves, Dickens was only too glad to be home.
3. As a result of point two, Dickens was actually rather ignorant of the political scene in France around the time the Revolution broke out.
4. A Tale of Two Cities, then, is a tale that Dickens had wonderfully wrought out of all that he had read in Thomas Carlyle’s history of The French Revolution.
5. However, it would seem, that while Carlyle did not particularly understand the sentiments of the mass populous in France, Dickens did. And so, his account of the French Revolution in this novel is supposed to be more accurate than that of Carlyle’s!

On this note I’m excitedly gearing for a relishing read!