A Tale of Two Cities

“‘Jerry, say that my answer was, Recalled to life.’”  

Lorry’s response to the message he receives from Tellson’s refers to the fact that Alexandre Manette has been released from imprisonment in the Bastille, and that Lorry is now on his way to see him and reunite him with his daughter Lucie. The cryptic phrasing, however, also introduces one of the novel’s central themes: resurrection. In this case, the imprisonment Manette has undergone is described as a kind of living death that only his daughter’s love can pull him back from. Over the rest of the novel, however, the idea of resurrection will appear in many other different contexts, including, most famously, Sydney Carton’s redemption through his love for Lucie and the sacrifice he undertakes on her behalf.

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other […] Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to his. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all […] It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page.” 

The idea that it is difficult to truly know another person recurs throughout A Tale of Two Cities, often in relatively straightforward ways. This is a novel in which multiple characters keep life-altering secrets from those closest to them: Madame Defarge, for instance, only told her husband who her family was and what happened to them decades later. What the narrator is describing in this passage, however, is a more existential problem—specifically, that no amount of time would ever allow us to fully know someone else because we are all ultimately isolated by virtue of being separate and unique individuals.

It’s striking that Dickens likens this isolation to death, given that Sydney Carton—a character who repeatedly describes himself as dead—often laments his loneliness, and the distance that separates him from all other humans; as he tells Darnay, he “care[s] for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for [him]” (89). Although some of this loneliness is of Carton’s own making, this passage suggests that it’s also a more general aspect of the human condition, and therefore perhaps part of what “resurrection” saves us from; significantly, Carton only escapes his loneliness through his final, Christ-like sacrifice.

“The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes […] Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine lees—BLOOD.”

The passage, which describes a cask of wine spilled in a Parisian slum, introduces the wine and blood motif that will be so prominent throughout the novel. It’s also a good example of the complex ways in which Dickens uses the association between wine and blood. On the face of it, the scene seems to distort the usual Christian symbolism of the relationship, with the frenzy of the crowd in this scene foreshadows their later bloodthirstiness during the Revolution (as does the writing of the word “blood” on the wall). Rather than purifying the drinkers, then, this wine morally taints them. Looked at from another perspective, however, the passage is an indictment of the people who have made such a scene possible; the crowd is only frenzied because it’s starving, and the word “blood” is a reference to the fact that the French ruling classes have the blood of the peasantry on their hands. Although this doesn’t erase the “stain” of the Revolution’s violence, it implies that that violence is the result of an already violent system.

“Some long-obliterated marks of an actively intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves through the black mist that had fallen on [Doctor Manette]. They were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands […] which were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and hope—so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed, like a moving light, from him to her.” 

The description of Doctor Manette’s reunion with his daughter Lucie touches on several of the novel’s most important themes and motifs. For instance, it contains some of the most straightforward examples of light and dark imagery in the novel, with the narrator likening the aftereffects of Manette’s imprisonment to a “black mist” and associating Lucie (or rather, Manette’s response to Lucie) with light. Images of death and resurrection are also prominent—most notably in the description of Manette’s face as “spectral.” The passage captures the role that Lucie will play in her father’s life, drawing him out of his state of mental “imprisonment” and back towards a full and happy life.

“The Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travelers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning […] Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that ‘Whatever is, is right’; an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.’” 

Although A Tale of Two Cities depicts 18th-century England as comparatively calm and enlightened, the novel also draws subtle parallels between that country and the more obviously violent and unstable France. In this passage, for instance, the narrator’s description of prisoners being carted to execution from the Old Bailey foreshadows the tumbrils that later carry prisoners of the French Republic to the guillotine. The public apathy towards this sight is also ominous, given that the narrator will later remark that the people of Paris are “so used […] to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the hands is not so much as suspended” (385). The warning against apathy becomes even clearer in the following lines, as Dickens mocks the idea that the status quo is necessarily good or fair simply because it’s the status quo. Ultimately, the implication of passages like this one is that what happened in France could also happen in England if the plight of the poor and suffering continues to be ignored.

“Waste forces with 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 […] Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; and it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.” 

This passage is perhaps the closest Dickens comes to revealing the precise source of Sydney Carton’s despair. Unlike, for example, his colleague Stryver, Carton is perfectly capable of appreciating and even longing for what is good, beautiful, and “honourable.” For instance, he has an almost heavenly vision of an alternate reality full of hope and love. Ultimately, however, the very fact that Carton can appreciate these qualities only deepens his misery, because he feels that they are forever beyond his reach—partly, no doubt, because of his alcoholism, but perhaps also because of a more general disillusionment with himself and with the world at large.

“‘Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the surface of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures—found only among women—who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives.” 

Lorry’s views of Miss Pross crystallize the novel’s views on what makes someone a “good” woman. Although Miss Pross flouts 19th-century gender norms in some ways—she is outspoken and physically strong, for instance—she is conventionally feminine in the way that most counts: she is selflessly devoted to those she loves, and (as this passage notes) entirely unmotivated by personal jealousy. This distinguishes her from a woman like Madame Defarge, who similarly departs from the feminine ideal, but without being softened by love for others.

“Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broken some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage and ringing on its floor.” 

The death of Gaspard’s son is a pivotal moment in terms of the novel’s plot (it leads directly to the Marquis’s murder), but also, as this exchange demonstrates, in terms of motif and character. Although the Marquis’s reckless driving is itself a demonstration of his disdain for the lower classes, his response to running over and killing a child illustrates his arrogance even more starkly. The Marquis doesn’t truly consider “common things” like the boy human to begin with, but is in any case essentially unable to imagine a crime he can’t buy his way out of. The crowd, however, rejects the coin he had offered as compensation for the boy’s death, marking the beginning of an era when the Marquis and his peers will be forced to reckon with the moral costs of their actions.

“The father had long ago taken up his bundle and hidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball—when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.” 

This passage is an early and especially explicit example of the link the novel establishes between Madame Defarge and destiny: her knitting, which is itself an allusion to the Greek goddesses of destiny, has “the steadfastness of Fate.” Since Dickens later reveals that the fabric Madame Defarge knits serves as an account of all those marked for death, her knitting does in fact foretell the future in a very literal way. Even in this passage, however, it’s clear that Madame Defarge is not a force to trifle with, since the narrator depicts her alongside a list of naturally-occurring, unstoppable processes—the current of a river, the transition from day to night, etc. It’s also significant that the narrator describes the “Fancy Ball” (a shorthand for the Ancien Régime) as one of things “running its course.” To some extent, the narrator suggests, the actions of the French aristocracy in the run-up to the Revolution were themselves the product of fate or fixed natural laws, which raises doubts about whether a similar crisis could be averted in the future.

“‘Better to be a rational creature […] and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see.’

“‘This property and France are lost to me,’ said the nephew, sadly. ‘I renounce them.’

“‘Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?’”

During Darnay’s trial at the Old Bailey, Dickens briefly hinted at his democratic sympathies by referring to admiring comments he had made about the American Revolution. With the revelation that Darnay was actually born into the French aristocracy, it becomes clear that those comments weren’t simply made in passing, but in fact reflect the values Darnay has chosen to live by; as he puts it in this passage, he “renounces” his aristocratic pedigree and plans to slowly return the land and property to the French people. The Marquis’s response, however, proves prophetic (though not in the way he imagines). Darnay does in fact renounce his uncle’s property after the latter’s death, but he is ultimately unable to renounce his broader inheritance as an Evrémonde, and is condemned for it under the French Republic. To some extent, then, the Marquis is correct in saying that being an aristocrat is Darnay’s “natural destiny,” since he is viewed as such by the peasantry despite all his efforts to distance himself from his family.

“‘Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division; in the former case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one respect, such a mystery to me; I can make no guess at the state of her heart.’” 

When Darnay confesses his love for Lucie to her father, Manette admits that he doesn’t know whether or not Lucie shares Darnay’s feelings. In doing so, he underscores a central idea in the novel: that it’s ultimately impossible to fully know another person, including those closest to us. In fact, Manette suggests that closeness can in some cases be an impediment to true understanding. Of course, the “mystery” Manette is referring to here is harmless, but in retrospect, his words could apply equally well to the secrets he keeps from Lucie—most notably, the fact that Darnay’s family was the behind his imprisonment, which he presumably avoids mentioning in order to spare Lucie pain.

“‘I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation, I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.’”

The moment when Carton declares his love for Lucie is a turning point in A Tale of Two Cities—most obviously, because his visit ends with a promise to “give his life, to keep a life [she] love[s] beside [her]” (159), laying the groundwork for the novel’s conclusion. However, the exchange is significant not only in terms of plot but also of theme and character, since Carton’s sacrifice at the end of the novel is inseparable from the views of himself and his life that he expresses in this passage. Carton speaks here like someone who is dying, at least in a spiritual sense; Lucie is the “last dream of his soul” because he expects that the hope and goodness she represents will soon be beyond his reach forever. In fact, Carton is in some ways already dead, with Lucie having temporarily brought him back to life by “kindling [him], heap of ashes that [he is], into fire” (157). Carton is of course wrong when he denies that anything good could ever come even of his love for Lucie; thematically, however, his utter despair earlier in the novel helps frame the transformation he undergoes in the last few days of his life as a symbolic form of “resurrection.”  

“‘The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too—as you have—but it was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions.’” 

On the night before her wedding, Lucie questions whether her father is comfortable with the thought of her marrying. Manette tries to reassure his daughter by describing the fantasies he used to entertain while in prison, but as he acknowledges here, words ultimately fail to capture much of his experience of imprisonment. The passage is therefore another example of the limits of our ability to understand others, even in the context of close relationships; in this case, as selfless and devoted as Lucie is, she simply can’t grasp the full extent of her father’s trauma.

“How near to her heart the echoes of her child’s tread came, and those of her own dear father’s, always active and self-possessed, and those of her dear husband’s, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him.” 

Although the novel itself is set in the 18th century, Lucie Manette comes close to perfectly embodying the Victorian feminine ideal. In this description of her married life, it is clear both that she lives to selflessly serve her husband and father, and that she finds genuine contentment in doing so. What’s more, she possesses what Darnay calls a “magic” ability to divide her attention between different family members without seeming to divide her attention; on the contrary, the entire family becomes more unified through her presence and influence, as symbolized by the “golden thread” tying them all together.

It’s also striking that the narrator singles out Lucie’s “wise and elegant thrift” for particular praise. In the context of a passage largely about love and devotion, this may seem like a relatively trivial quality to possess, but it establishes a clear contrast between the economical household Lucie runs and the extravagance of the French upper classes. In other words, the passage subtly hints that the conscientious and middle-class femininity Lucie embodies is an antidote to the sorts of social problems that led to the French Revolution.

“[The women] ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions […] Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven, our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon!”

Generally speaking, the novel idealizes the domestic role of women in the 19th century, suggesting that the pure and selfless love of a woman like Lucie for her family can have a moral ripple-effect outwards into society. Dickens suggests that this sort of family life was impossible under the Ancien Régime. The harmful effects of this become clear as the Revolution begins. In this passage, women’s “natural” feminine and maternal feelings are twisted into a violent desire for revenge on anyone who has made their families suffer.

“The fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and South […] and whosever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.”

This account of the men who set fire to the Marquis’s chateau illustrates the extent to which impersonal forces govern history in A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens tells his readers virtually nothing about these “figures”—not even their names—and in describing their movements “East, West, North, and South” the men almost become synonymous with the cardinal directions themselves. What follows reinforces this idea, since the victims of the violence seem interchangeable and beside the point (“whosoever hung”) in the face of the destruction that has been unleashed. Finally, the passage also touches on the question of just how much bloodshed will finally satisfy the people or compensate for what they have suffered. It strongly hints that no amount ever could, which is one reason the novel ultimately recommends mercy rather than vengeance.

“Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and he must go. Everything that arose before his mind drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that bad aims were being worked out in his own unhappy land by bad instruments, and that he who could not fail to know that he was better than they, was not there, trying to do something to stay the bloodshed, and assert the claims of mercy and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled, and half reproaching him, he had been brought to the pointed comparison of himself with the brave old gentleman in whom duty was so strong; upon that comparison (injurious to himself), had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur […] Upon those, had followed Gabelle’s letter: the appeal of an innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to is justice, honour, and good name.”

Darnay’s decision to return to France is a pivotal moment in the novel’s plot, and it offers worthwhile insight into his character. Given Darnay’s overall character, it’s not surprising that he feels a responsibility to intervene on Gabelle’s behalf. By contrast, his hopes of influencing the course of the Revolution are noble, but perhaps also somewhat arrogant. The narrator remarks slightly later that Darnay is essentially intoxicated by the “glorious vision of doing good” (252). Although Darnay’s desire to be a hero is a relatively minor character flaw, it proves to have serious consequences. The passage also downplays Darnay’s responsibility for his actions through the motif of “winds and streams”—like so many other characters in the novel, Darnay is being propelled by powerful currents outside his control.

“[The guillotine] was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.”

In addition to being a story of personal redemption, A Tale of Two Cities frequently applies the Christian imagery of resurrection to society as a whole. In this passage, however, the references to “regeneration” and the “Cross” are ironic, and a measure of just how far the Revolution has fallen away from Christian ideas of mercy; instead of worshipping a symbol of sacrificial love, France is now worshipping a symbol of vengeance and hate, while simultaneously expecting the killings to give rise to a peaceful and utopian society. Nevertheless, at the end of the novel, the guillotine itself does in fact come to resemble the cross, in that it also becomes a symbol of sacrificial love (specifically, Carton’s).

“‘Let that father go into the line of the reg’lar diggin’, and make amends for what he would have un-dug—if it was so—by diggin’ of ‘em in with a will, and with conwictions respectin’ the future keepin’ of ‘em safe. That, Mr. Lorry […] is what I would respectfully offer to you, sir. A man don’t see all this here a goin’ on dreadful round him, in the way of Subjects without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to bring the price down to porterage and hardly that, without havin’ his serious thoughts of things.’”

Throughout the novel, Cruncher’s grave robbing has served as a darkly comic twist on the theme of resurrection. Ultimately, however, even Cruncher experiences the pull of true, moral resurrection, with the sheer scale of the killing in France prompting him to reevaluate the ethics of what he previously described as an “honest trade.” His announcement that, with Lorry’s consent, he will go into the more reputable line of gravedigging represents a return to the proper order of things. 

“The day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion.

“But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to [Carton’s] heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge, of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it.” 

After Darnay’s re-arrest, Carton meets with Lorry and Barsad and then spends the night walking the streets of Paris; in retrospect, it’s clear that he has already devised his plan to exchange places with Darnay and is mentally preparing himself for the sacrifice. The above passage occurs just at the end of Carton’s wanderings, and functions both as a metaphor for Carton’s life and for the theme of resurrection more broadly. When dawn initially breaks, the narrator describes it in dark and deathlike terms. He even states that the entire world seems “delivered over to Death’s dominion,” as though there is no hope of anything living or flourishing ever again.

The sunrise is therefore a form of resurrection, and it’s one the narrator associates specifically with Carton through the image of “a bridge of light” linking him to the sun. The passage underscores the idea that Carton has at last emerged from his state of living death—or, as Dickens puts it a few pages earlier, that he has “wandered and struggled and got lost, but [has] at length struck into his road and [sees] its end” (325).

“‘I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should most pray for, was that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out […] Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing at the at that time, poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and comfort him in our cottage—our dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had not been married many weeks, when that man’s brother saw her and admired her, and asked that man to lend her to him—for what are husbands among us!’”

The passage comes from Manette’s prison testimonial but quotes the young peasant man who was fatally injured trying to avenge his sister’s rape at the hands of the Evrémonde family. It centers on what to Dickens is one of the worst crimes of the Ancien Régime: its destruction of traditional family structure and gender norms. This is clearest in the Evrémondes’ disdain for the marriages of their tenants; it isn’t simply the fact that his sister was raped that upsets her brother, but rather the fact that in being raped, she was forced to “betray” her marriage vows.

The idea that the boy’s father told his family to pray that “their women might be barren” is also a shocking statement in the context of 19th-century gender norms, which typically maintained that motherhood was a woman’s highest purpose in life. Of course, the aristocratic indifference to lower-class family life goes hand in hand with their broader dehumanization of the peasantry, which this passage uses the motif of predators and prey to explore; the boy describes his family as “hunted” by the Evrémondes, and also suggests that the Evrémondes view their tenants as “dogs.” The latter becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because in treating the lower-classes like animals, the French aristocracy eventually unleashes their most instinctive and violent urges.

“And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and self-immolations on the people’s altar.”

In this description of the courtroom’s delight at Manette’s personal relationship to Darnay, Dickens draws his readers’ attention to yet another resemblance between the actions of the French Republic and those of the Ancien Régime. The novel repeatedly indicts the French aristocracy for destroying or distorting family relationships among the peasantry. It uses the nobility’s indifference to the family as a measure of their depravity. Now, it is the lower classes and their allies that force people to betray their natural allegiances to family members in the name of loyalty to the state. The parallel is especially damning coming on the heels of Manette’s account, which details the Evrémondes’ callous destruction of an entire peasant family.

“It was nothing to [Madame Defarge], that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself.”

In many ways, Madame Defarge is less a character than a symbol of the rage and vengefulness of the French Revolution. As this passage acknowledges, she is completely implacable in her quest for revenge against Darnay and his family because she sees them not as individuals, but rather as members of a family that has injured her and owes her compensation. The fact that she views them as her “natural prey” further underscores her villainy since it hearkens back to earlier images of the French aristocracy as the predators of the poor. She is now indistinguishable from a figure like the Marquis.

The last sentence, however, adds a humanizing note to the portrayal when it notes that Madame Defarge doesn’t even pity herself. In other words, she has been so ground down for so many years that she has lost any sense of herself as a human being, which Dickens suggests ultimately makes her all the more vicious; to put it in terms of one of the novel’s major themes, Madame Defarge doesn’t respect herself enough to want to redeem herself.