See all related overviews in Oxford Reference ». A Tale of Two Cities. He has just been released, demented, when the story opens; he is brought to England, where he gradually recovers his sanity. Charles Darnay, who conceals under the name the fact that he is a nephew of the marquis, has left France and renounced his heritage from detestation of the cruel practices of the old French nobility; he falls in love with Lucie, Dr Manette's daughter, and they are happily married.
During the Terror he goes to Paris to try to save a faithful servant, who is accused of having served the emigrant nobility. He is himself arrested, condemned to death, and saved only at the last moment by Sydney Carton, a reckless wastrel of an English barrister, whose character is redeemed by his generous devotion to Lucie. Carton, who strikingly resembles Darnay in appearance, smuggles the latter out of prison, and takes his place on the scaffold.
Subjects: Literature — Literary studies 19th century. How does Madame Defarge die? Why does Charles Darnay return to France after his marriage? Why was Dr. Manette imprisoned? Previous section Movie Adaptations. Popular pages: A Tale of Two Cities. Take a Study Break.
Meanwhile the lovers of the old irresponsible humour and high spirits of Dickens's earlier days must admit that the Tale is an historical melodrama of unrivalled vividness and power. It is a book that will not allow itself to be forgotten, with its refrain of trampling multitudinous feet, and its melancholy figure of Sydney Carton.
The French Revolution has been a fertile but not a fortunate field for novelists. Scott justly observed, about some other historical events, that they are, in themselves, too strong for romantic treatment.
We are too near that chaldron of Medea, too near its brink ourselves, for the existence of a merely artistic interest. Therefore even the great Dumas did not succeed in this field, as he did in fields more remote, and among catastrophes less cosmical. Dickens has, probably, the advantage here over that renowned master of France; his English background aids him, by affording relief.
Doubtless this is the best novel of the Revolution, and the best of Dickens's novels which venture into history. On one point, historical accuracy, not very much need be said. Dickens, in a letter to Bulwer Lytton, shows that he was quite familiar with the scientifically historical view of his topic.
We must beware of checking the fancy of the novelist by pedantic restrictions—pedantic because out of place. The historical novelist is not the historian. Freeman has been severe on Ivanhoe for want of congruity with facts. Kenilworth and Peveril of the Peak present characters dead long before the tale begins—or at that time children, though they figure as grown men.
In Thackeray's splendid picture of the King, in Esmond , there is hardly one line or touch of colour consistent with historical verity. This is hard on the character, and Dickens's wicked Marquis may be hard on his order.
The Bastille, by the time it was destroyed, was as obsolete almost for its old purposes, and nearly as empty, as the cave of Giant Pagan, in Bunyan. But in a curious wandering book, the "Letters" of Oliver Macallister, we read of horrors worse than Dickens could invent—the black dungeons of Galbanon, where men's lives were one long noisome torture; where prisoners disappeared for ever, none knew how or why, none dared to ask.
Macallister, a mouton , or prison spy, causes, despite his verbose futile digressions, a shudder which cannot be forgotten.
The date of his experiences was , sufficiently near the period of the novel for the purposes of fiction. The pressure of taxation, its most unequal pressure, is undeniable, while the results were wasted in the way with which we are familiar. Dickens cites Mercier's Tableau de Paris as authority for his bad Marquis, though he does not tell us what were the Quellen of Mercier.
Indeed, we need not ask. The question is not whether the stories are true, but whether, like the blood-baths of Louis XV. The historian examines the facts: to the novelist is permitted a larger liberty.
As an old critic justly puts it, the novelist is "the landscape gardener of history. That is rather an extreme opinion. Certainly the peasant escaped from the element of tyrannical personal caprice. Revolutions never produce a millennium, but they gratify the passion of revenge, and they shift and modify grievances.
The Tale of Two Cities was the next in sequence after Little Dorrit , and though so vastly superior to that work in vividness, concentration, and construction, was written in unhappy circumstances. A Tale of Two Cities haunts me. Follows me everywhere. View all 12 comments. Apr 13, Candi rated it really liked it Shelves: classics-shelf , charles-dickens , book-i-own. 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!
Well, time flies and here I am finally having picked up my copy and actually reading this beloved-by-many classic. In fact, it is a work that for me was more appreciated as a whole rather than for its individual parts.
I needed to complete this to fully grasp the plot and the overall merit of the novel. The final portion was entirely compelling and quite brilliant, in fact. This is a novel, as the title suggests, of two cities… that of London and that of Paris.
It is a historical fiction work beginning in which then takes us further into the depths and horrors of the French Revolution. There is an abundance of mystery that I was not expecting, but thoroughly enjoyed. In addition to the juxtaposition of the two cities, we also see the contrasts between good and evil, hope and despair, death and rebirth.
As suggested in my opening quote, secrets abound and are slowly revealed. Characters are drawn well, as one would naturally expect from Dickens, although I never quite felt the emotional tug towards any of them, until near the end.
But when I did reach this point, gosh it was worth it! Sydney Carton… an unforgettable man… sigh. When the reader steps through the gates of Paris, one can feel the tension and sense the shadow of what is to come… the atmosphere is so charged with insecurity, suspicion, and dread.
If you are born with the wrong blood, happen to land in the wrong place at the wrong time, or sympathize with the accused and the condemned, your life is in danger.
The threat of the Guillotine looms like a monster over the people of the city. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the street to slake her devouring thirst.
Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine! Quite simply, the writing is excellent, but the story itself failed to grab me initially. What was lacking in Two Cities for me was the existence of a character like Jean Valjean, a character so vivid and so sharply drawn that it seems I literally spent weeks in the mind of this tortured soul. Probably, it is not fair to make this comparison, but there you have it. The development of Sydney Carton was rewarding and the ending of this tale was breathtaking.
My rating is at a firm 4 stars, with the hope that someday the re-read will edge it up to the full 5. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. View all 42 comments. Some how my review of this got deleted which is good because I think after sitting a while I can appreciate the book more.
When I read it it was confusing and slow and then towards the end really picked up and I was kind of disoriented but it gives a really good view into things in the period before the French Revolution.
Learning about it was one thing but reading this made me very sympathetic of the peasants and angry on thier behalf, honestly surprised they didn't start rioting sooner. View all 26 comments. Jun 12, Laura rated it it was amazing Shelves: classic , perennial-favorite , english-lit. Years of teaching this novel to teenagers never dimmed my thrill in reading it — if anything, I grew to love it more every time I watched kids gasp aloud at the revelations!
Critics are divided on its place in the Dickens canon, but the ones who think it an inferior work are simply deranged. It has everything: dark deeds, revolution, madness, love, thwarted love, forgiveness, revenge, and a stunning act of self-sacrifice. And melodrama! Oh, how Dickens loved melodrama, but in A Tale of Two Citie Years of teaching this novel to teenagers never dimmed my thrill in reading it — if anything, I grew to love it more every time I watched kids gasp aloud at the revelations!
And like any good mystery, the payoff at the end is worth the time it takes to get there Dickens is a master of the type of narration that simultaneously moves forward and back in time. In other words, strategically placed revelations from the past inform the present and shape the future. The brilliant timing both of his hints and of the actual revelations is a bonus field of study.
Plus, A Tale of Two Cities is a profoundly moral story, with themes of vengeance versus forgiveness, sins of the fathers being visited on the children, resurrection and rebirth, and the possibility of redemption. View all 11 comments. And even if Romola seemed to have more of a Victorian than a Florentine Renaissance tone, the story and the context were very nicely woven together. While with A Tale I felt I as reading two separate stories. The two meanings of the word historia separated: history and story.
May be it was because Dickens was dealing with a convulsive period that was still too close to him and his contemporaries.
Its threats must have resonated with a greater echo after the revolutions that again swept through France as well as other European countries. When he wrote his novel only a decade had passed since that latest wave of violence and political turmoil.
One can certainly feel Dickens alarm at the dangers that loom over humanity. His horror came first, and then he tried to horrify his readers. And yet, as my reading proceeded, I began to feel how these two axis or needles were pulling out something together. And I think it is Dickens excellent writing, with his uses of repetitions, or anaphora; his complex set of symbols—and I am beginning to become familiar with the Dickens iconography; his idiosyncratic mixture of humour and drama; his use of alliteration and onomatopoeia; his extraordinary development of images—and I think this novel has some of the best I have read by him; and his ability to sustain a positive core within a great deal of drab, that succeeds in making those two needles knit something coherent and consistent.
And indeed my favourite image was the Knitting, which Dickens develops throughout the novel, with all its mythological weight--that binds the threads of fate and volition, of patience and disquiet, of love and hatred--, which became for me also the knitting of the writer. The periodic and steady rhythm of Knit and Purl produced with threads of words, meshing in the melodrama and the emotions, the varying colours with their lights and shadows, increasing or decreasing the episodes with literary tricks such as adding a new thread or character or knitting two stiches in one go by solving a mystery.
So, as I came to the end I had to admit that , yes, the Tale of Two Tales has woven for me a magnificent novel. There has been somewhat of a 'Resurrection' in my reading too. View all 43 comments. I was going on a cross-country trip and decided this would be a good book to while away the hours. From the first immortal words: 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 Set in the years - , before and during the French revolution, this long Victorian novel follows the lovely, kindhearted Lucie Manette and the people whose lives she touches, especially her father Dr.
Alexandre Manette, imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 years and driven nearly insane; Charles Darney, an emigre from France; Sidney Carlton, a cynical English barrister. We meet the infamous Defarges, a husband and wife who embrace the revolutionary cause and especially Madame Defarge descend into bloodthirsty proponents of Madame Guillotine.
I'll never forget reading the last pages on the plane, trying probably in vain to hide my tears from the strangers sitting around me on the plane. View all 15 comments. Aug 22, Matt rated it really liked it Shelves: classic-novels , french-revolution. Begun in as a revolt against the poverty and hunger suffered by huge masses of the population, the French Revolutionaries sought the noble ideal of equality.
In achieving this end, however, they unleashed a torrent of blood. They toppled a king, and then beheaded him. They killed thousands of people who resisted, many of those resisting in thoughts or words only. Finally, they started to kill each other, in a dispute over who was most pure. The result was a tumultuous decade in which lofty ends crashed against lethal means, leaving us with an event that is still hotly debated to this day. Both are good for you, but I have never been able to fully like either.
It has never been a question of talent. Dickens is an incredibly skilled writer with an unmatched eye for creating memorable characters. That is, Dickens published many of his novels in serial form, and it often feels like he is actively inflating his word count in order to pad his oft-troubled bank account. The resulting digressions, plot contrivances, and weak endings tend to dampen the enjoyment I get from the worlds he creates.
The best Dickens is — in my humble estimation — A Christmas Carol. The novella is slim, symmetrical, and achieves the perfect balance between character and plot. There is not a single unnecessary moment, not a single misplaced beat.
A Tale of Two Cities , one of two works of historical fiction Dickens published in his life, straddles the extremes. It is a bit of both, actually. One is almost tempted to say it was the best of books, it was the worst… But no, I would not give into that temptation. We begin in the year , with a messenger flagging down the mail-coach between London and Dover. The passenger who receives this message is a banker named Jarvis Lorry, who has just learned that Dr.
Alexandre Manette, a French physician, has been released from the infamous Bastille prison in Paris, after serving an eighteen-year sentence.
Manette, it turns out, has a daughter named Lucie, who has always believed her father to be dead. While Lucie reunites with her father, we are introduced to the cruel Marquis St. The Marquis has a nephew, Charles Darnay, who narrowly escaped a conviction for treason against Great Britain. Ultimately, Lucie and Charles fall in love, but Charles returns to France as the City of Lights is roiled by a storm of revolutionary violence.
At the risk of spoiling anything, I will end my summary there. Suffice to say, the results are both entirely predictable and also entirely unpredictable. Still, the storylines get so tangled and confused, it almost feels like a surprise when things happen. More importantly, Dickens seems to write with a clear idea of where he is going. In that sense, the plot is actually rather satisfying.
It also helps that A Tale of Two Cities is less than four-hundred pages long. As I mentioned above, Dickens is famed for his fictional creations, whether that is flinty Ebenezer Scrooge, sycophantic Uriah Heep, or the sadistic Miss Havisham. Here, that list is added to greatly, especially Madame Defarge, a devoted Revolutionary who chillingly knits patterns that represent the names of people to be killed.
At one point, her husband starts to worry about the excesses of the Revolution. Not Madame Defarge. Not all the characters are winners, though. Every moment I spent with her, I darkly hoped that Madame Defarge was adding some stiches to her list. He had an obvious social conscious when it came to the poor and the downtrodden, a consciousness fervently expressed by the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol.
His outrage is nearly glowing when he describes the Marquis, who kills a child and pays the father off with a coin. It is just as clear, however, that the violence attending the French Revolution disturbed him. The most affecting part of this novel — or perhaps any of his novels — is the tumbril ride one of his characters takes to the guillotine. Meanwhile, the zealous Revolutionary Madame Defarge is portrayed as a villain.
In that way, A Tale of Two Cities really captures the tension of the French Revolution, where bad acts gave way to good intentions, which gave way to bad acts in the name of good intentions. The opening line says all that is needed to be said about the book. The time was worst, for it was tainted with hatred, violence, and vengeance. The time was also the best because there were love and compassion which endured it all.
I can still feel the effect of the suspense and tension even when writing the review a few days l "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times I can still feel the effect of the suspense and tension even when writing the review a few days later. Set on the backdrop of France before and after the French Revolution, Dickens weaves a sensitive and sympathetic tale on all those affected while laying down the grounds which caused the frenzy.
Dickens's historical portrayal is balanced and impartial. He shows what lead to the uprise of the peasants so brutally against the king and aristocracy. They were suppressed and were treated no better than animals. When people are so treated like beasts for a long time, it is no wonder that they would turn beasts eventually. That is what happened with them and Dickens is full of sympathy and empathy.
But the reign of terror that followed exercised more than retributive justice. Like the bloodthirsty vampires, it hunted the innocents whose only crime was being of aristocratic blood. Dickens boldly exposes this monstrous side as well.
He doesn't judge the frenzied Republic, nor condemn it, but he compares the action to a season of pestilence where some will have a secret attraction to the disease. In short, Dickens shows the abuse of power by both aristocrats and the republicans equally. The story is one of the warmest of Charles Dickens. Witty and bold would be my description of Dickens's writing, and it may extend to being sympathetic.
But I wouldn't have associated warmth with his writing. So it seems I still haven't fully comprehended him. The story drew me in from its opening. Though it had a bit of a disorganized structure and some repetitive writing, it was a solid four-star for me. The storyline was beautiful irrespective of the brutality and my nervous tension. The characters, being few another surprise for a Dickens book , it was easy to keep close contacts with them all.
I've read many reviews of the book where it was said that they disliked Lucy Manette, so I went into the read with a prejudiced mind. But to my surprise, I liked her from the start. I also liked Charles Evremond, Dr. Manette, and Sydney Carton. I felt that all of them were victims, and were full of sympathy. The latter, however, rose to the heights of a hero at the end, and without prejudice, I believe Sydney Carton is the noblest hero that ever graced classical literature for giving his life to keep a life dear to the woman he loves.
While I'm at the characters, I must say a word about the villain of the story. It is none other than Madame Defarge - a sinister woman - a sworn enemy of the aristocratic Evremond family with reasons of course , but who displays a disproportionate propensity for vengeance. The book was a solid four-star as I already mentioned until I reached the final few chapters.
Those few chapters took me through such a bittersweet journey that my rating jumped up another star and complemented the book with a firm five star. Mar 20, Adina marked it as abandoned Shelves: classics , , british. It is so different from the other two works that I've read by him and loved. I don't know, I don't like the tone of the story it might be the translation , cannot connect with the characters and I just don't like it. I thought that something is wrong with me but my mum saw the book on my shelf Today and she confessed that it was the only Dickens she could not read Just recently I begged her without success to DNF a novel that she told repeatedly how much she hated.
I might give this a try later but for now I have other books in line. I promised myself I will not torture myself anymore with books I don't like so next, please. View all 27 comments. Nov 22, Jason Koivu rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , fiction , historical-fiction. Hands down my favorite Dickens' I've read yet! It's got love, sacrifice, revenge, revolt and other exciting verbs!
I'm a big fan of a solid marriage between character development and action. A Tale of Two Cities is well-wed. Some criticize Dickens for his trite stories and overblown caricature-esque characters. Yes, the man wrote some less-than-perfect books. He wrote them for a wide-ranging public and he wrote for money. High-minded prose eloquently crafted may garner praise, but it doesn't alw Hands down my favorite Dickens' I've read yet! High-minded prose eloquently crafted may garner praise, but it doesn't always pay the bills.
But here you get the author at his finest, plotting a riveting tale and creating sympathetic characters with empathy up the wazoo.
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