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Title: A Tale of Two Cities
Series:
----------
Author: Charles Dickens
Rating:
5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages:
368
Words: 136.5K
From Wikipedia
In
1775, a man flags down the nightly mail-coach on its route from
London to Dover. The man is Jerry Cruncher, an employee of Tellson's
Bank in London; he carries a message for Jarvis Lorry, a passenger
and one of the bank's managers. Lorry sends Jerry back to deliver a
cryptic response to the bank: "Recalled to Life." The
message refers to Alexandre Manette, a French physician who has been
released from the Bastille after an 18-year imprisonment. Once Lorry
arrives in Dover, he meets Dr. Manette's daughter Lucie and her
governess, Miss Pross. Lucie has believed her father to be dead, and
faints at the news that he is alive; Lorry takes her to France to
reunite with her father.
In
the Paris neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Dr. Manette
has been given lodgings by his former servant Ernest Defarge and his
wife Therese, owners of a wine shop. Lorry and Lucie find him in a
small garret, where he spends much of his time making shoes – a
skill he learned in prison – which he uses to distract himself from
his thoughts and which has become an obsession for him. He does not
recognise Lucie at first but does eventually see the resemblance to
her mother through her blue eyes and long golden hair, a strand of
which he found on his sleeve when he was imprisoned. Lorry and Lucie
take him back to England.
Book
the Second: The Golden Thread
In
1780, French émigré Charles Darnay is on trial for treason against
the British Crown. The key witnesses against him are two British
spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, who claim that Darnay gave
information about British troops in North America to the French.
Under cross-examination by Mr. Stryver, the barrister defending
Darnay, Barsad claims that he would recognise Darnay anywhere.
Stryver points out his colleague, Sydney Carton, who bears a strong
resemblance to Darnay, and Barsad admits that the two men look nearly
identical. With Barsad's eyewitness testimony now discredited, Darnay
is acquitted.
In
Paris, the hated and abusive Marquis St. Evrémonde orders his
carriage driven recklessly fast through the crowded streets, hitting
and killing the child of Gaspard in Saint Antoine. The Marquis throws
a coin to Gaspard to compensate him for his loss. Defarge, having
observed the incident, comes forth to comfort the distraught father,
saying the child would be worse off alive. This piece of wisdom
pleases the Marquis, who throws a coin to Defarge also. As the
Marquis departs, a coin is flung back into his carriage.
Arriving
at his country château, the Marquis meets his nephew and heir,
Darnay. Out of disgust with his aristocratic family, the nephew has
shed his real surname (St. Evrémonde) and anglicised his mother's
maiden name, D'Aulnais, to Darnay.[6] The following passage records
the Marquis' principles of aristocratic superiority:
"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."[7]
That
night, Gaspard, who followed the Marquis to his château by riding on
the underside of the carriage, stabs and kills him in his sleep.
Gaspard leaves a note on the knife saying, "Drive him fast to
his tomb. This, from JACQUES."[8] After nearly a year on the
run, he is caught and hanged above the village well.
In
London, Darnay asks for Dr. Manette's permission to wed Lucie, but
Carton confesses his love to Lucie as well. Knowing she will not love
him in return, Carton promises to "embrace any sacrifice for you
and for those dear to you".[9] Stryver considers proposing
marriage to Lucie, but Lorry talks him out of the idea.
On
the morning of the marriage, Darnay reveals his real name and family
lineage to Dr. Manette, a detail he had been asked to withhold until
that day. In consequence, Dr. Manette reverts to his obsessive
shoemaking after the couple leave for their honeymoon. He returns to
sanity before their return, and the whole incident is kept secret
from Lucie. Lorry and Miss Pross destroy the shoemaking bench and
tools, which Dr. Manette had brought with him from Paris.
As
time passes in England, Lucie and Charles begin to raise a family, a
son (who dies in childhood) and a daughter, little Lucie. Lorry finds
a second home and a sort of family with the Darnays. Stryver marries
a rich widow with three children and becomes even more insufferable
as his ambitions begin to be realised. Carton, even though he seldom
visits, is accepted as a close friend of the family and becomes a
special favourite of little Lucie.
In
July 1789, the Defarges help to lead the storming of the Bastille, a
symbol of royal tyranny. Defarge enters Dr. Manette's former cell,
"One Hundred and Five, North Tower,"[10] and searches it
thoroughly. Throughout the countryside, local officials and other
representatives of the aristocracy are dragged from their homes to be
killed, and the St. Evrémonde château is burned to the ground.
In
1792, Lorry decides to travel to Paris to collect important documents
from the Tellson's branch in that city and place them in safekeeping
against the chaos of the French Revolution. Darnay intercepts a
letter written by Gabelle, one of his uncle's servants who has been
imprisoned by the revolutionaries, pleading for the Marquis to help
secure his release. Without telling his family or revealing his
position as the new Marquis, Darnay sets out for Paris.
Book
the Third: The Track of a Storm
Shortly
after Darnay arrives in Paris, he is denounced for being an emigrated
aristocrat from France and jailed in La Force Prison.[11] Dr.
Manette, Lucie, little Lucie, Jerry, and Miss Pross travel to Paris
and meet Lorry to try to free Darnay. A year and three months pass,
and Darnay is finally tried.
Dr
Manette, viewed as a hero for his imprisonment in the Bastille,
testifies on Darnay's behalf at his trial. Darnay is released, only
to be arrested again later that day. A new trial begins the following
day, under new charges brought by the Defarges and a third individual
who is soon revealed as Dr Manette. He had written an account of his
imprisonment at the hands of Darnay's father and hidden it in his
cell; Defarge found it while searching the cell during the storming
of the Bastille.
While
running errands with Jerry, Miss Pross is amazed to see her long-lost
brother Solomon, but he does not want to be recognised in public.
Carton suddenly steps forward from the shadows and identifies Solomon
as Barsad, one of the spies who tried to frame Darnay for treason at
his trial in 1780. Jerry remembers that he has seen Solomon with Cly,
the other key witness at the trial, and that Cly had faked his death
to escape England. By threatening to denounce Solomon to the
revolutionary tribunal as a Briton, Carton blackmails him into
helping with a plan.
At
the tribunal, Defarge identifies Darnay as the nephew of the dead
Marquis St. Evrémonde and reads Dr Manette's letter. Defarge had
learned Darnay's lineage from Solomon during the latter's visit to
the wine shop several years earlier. The letter describes Dr
Manette's imprisonment at the hands of Darnay's father and uncle for
trying to report their crimes against a peasant family. Darnay's
uncle had become infatuated with a girl, whom he had kidnapped and
raped; despite Dr. Manette's attempt to save her, she died. The uncle
killed her husband by working him to death, and her father died from
a heart attack upon being informed of what had happened. Before he
died defending the family honour, the brother of the raped peasant
had hidden the last member of the family, his younger sister. The
Evrémonde brothers imprisoned Dr. Manette after he refused their
offer of a bribe to keep quiet. He concludes his letter by condemning
the Evrémondes, "them and their descendants, to the last of
their race."[12] Dr. Manette is horrified, but he is not allowed
to retract his statement. Darnay is sent to the Conciergerie and
sentenced to be guillotined the next day.
Carton
wanders into the Defarges' wine shop, where he overhears Madame
Defarge talking about her plans to have both Lucie and little Lucie
condemned. Carton discovers that Madame Defarge was the surviving
sister of the peasant family savaged by the Evrémondes.[13] At
night, when Dr. Manette returns, shattered after spending the day in
many failed attempts to save Darnay's life, he falls into an
obsessive search for his shoemaking implements. Carton urges Lorry to
flee Paris with Lucie, her father, and Little Lucie, asking them to
leave as soon as he joins.
Shortly
before the executions are to begin, Solomon sneaks Carton into the
prison for a visit with Darnay. The two men trade clothes, and Carton
drugs Darnay and has Solomon carry him out. Carton has decided to be
executed in his place, taking advantage of their similar appearances,
and has given his own identification papers to Lorry to present on
Darnay's behalf. Following Carton's earlier instructions, the family
and Lorry flee to England with Darnay, who gradually regains
consciousness during the journey.
Meanwhile,
Madame Defarge, armed with a dagger and pistol, goes to the Manette
residence, hoping to apprehend Lucie and little Lucie and bring them
in for execution. However, the family is already gone and Miss Pross
stays behind to confront and delay Madame Defarge. As the two women
struggle, Madame Defarge's pistol discharges, killing her and causing
Miss Pross to go permanently deaf from noise and shock.
As
Carton waits to board the tumbril that will take him to his
execution, he is approached by another prisoner, a seamstress who had
been incarcerated with Darnay. She mistakes Carton for him, but
realises the truth upon seeing him at close range. Awed by his
unselfish courage and sacrifice, she asks to stay close to him and he
agrees. Upon their arrival at the guillotine, Carton comforts her,
telling her that their ends will be quick and that the worries of
their lives will not follow them into "the better land where ...
[they] will be mercifully sheltered." He is guillotined
immediately after the seamstress, a final prophetic thought running
through his mind.
When
I read this back in 2014, I was looking more at Sydney Carton and his
story of redemption of a wasted life. I was impressed beyond words.
This time around, I wanted to focus more on Charles Darnay, the
french noble who renounced his family name and their degenerative
lifestyle.
What
a difference that made and sadly, not for the better. I'm still
giving this 5 stars because it is a great story, but Darnay is no
hero and really, if his part could have been even smaller it would
have been better. He starts out with potential, defying his cruel
uncle and giving up all of his inheritance and even his name to move
to England to make an honest living working. Considering that the
working man was below even a slave in the French Aristocracy's view,
Darnay was making a huge sacrifice.
Unfortunately,
but true to form, Darnay still acts like an Aristocrat. When he
receives the letter from the bailiff of his former estates, he takes
it as his responsibility to free the man, even though Darnay had
renounced his estates and had nothing to do with what was going on.
He acted like an aristocrat when he chose to not talk about this to
his wife or his father-in-law and skipped off to France. He acted
like an aristocrat while in prison and just letting things happen. By
the end, I was pretty disgusted with Ol' Charley and if it weren't
for sympathy for his wife, I'd have told Sydney to let him die and
scarper off to safer climes.
Lucie,
Darnay's wife IS a sympathetic character as is her father, the former
Bastille prisoner. Dickens did an admirable job of painting them in a
light that was gentle and soft but without making them weak and
ineffectual.
Finally,
we come to Madame Defarge. What a monstrously evil woman. Her
bloodlust to kill Darnay and any that surround him was made all the
more reprehensible by her backstory. While revenge against Darnay's
uncle is more than understandable, Madame Defarge perverts even that
bit of possible sympathy by the audience by trying to kill Lucie and
her daughter and Lucie's father, all because they are associated with
Darnay. Dickens shows in no uncertain terms that hatred cannot be
reasoned with. You cannot talk someone out of hate, you cannot
educate someone out of hate. Hate like that can only be changed
supernaturally, by the power of God. It's just not within us humans
to be able to fix something so fundamentally broke within us.
This
is exactly why I like Dickens so much. Every time I read his books I
get something different. And I still enjoy the book too :-)
★★★★★
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