Social Upheaval in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Introduction

Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812–1870) was a British novelist widely considered the greatest novelist of the Victorian period (Bloom 11). Born in Portsmouth, Dickens was the second child in his family and faced a difficult childhood marked by poverty; his father was imprisoned for debt. Dickens began working at the age of twelve to help clear his family's arrears (Bloom 11). The hardships he endured provided him with rich material for his fiction. His novels, among them A Tale of Two Cities, offered a sympathetic account of the plight of the poor and examined social injustices and upheavals during the nineteenth century.

A Tale of Two Cities: Plot Overview

A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens's most innovative and celebrated works, written in 1859. The novel follows the lives of several characters in the years before and during the French Revolution. The story begins in Paris approximately fourteen years before the outbreak of the revolt. Doctor Manette is released from the Bastille prison after being unjustly imprisoned for eighteen years for attempting to bring members of the St. Évremonde family to trial (Dickens 25). His daughter Lucie, whom he last saw as a young child, travels from London to Paris with Mr. Lorry. Lorry and Lucie arrive in Paris at the wine shop of Madame Defarge and Monsieur Defarge.

Madame Defarge and her husband are deeply involved in inciting a peasant revolt. Doctor Manette is too frail and disoriented to recognize his daughter Lucie. The Manette family is later called to give evidence at the treason trial of Charles Darnay. The Manettes had met Darnay on their return journey from France. Darnay is a French language instructor and the nephew of the Marquis St. Évremonde; he is accused of being a French spy. He is acquitted when his lawyer, C. J. Stryver, confuses an eyewitness by presenting Sydney Carton, a legal colleague who closely resembles Darnay. The witness cannot positively identify Darnay. Sydney Carton, Stryver, and Darnay are all attracted to Lucie, and all seek to marry her. They become regular visitors to the Manette household, which is presided over by Miss Pross.

Conditions in France deteriorate as the population grows angry and discontented with the French aristocracy. Although Darnay has adopted his mother's maiden name to sever his ties with his noble family, he feels compelled to return to France after his uncle, the Marquis, kills a peasant child by running the child over with his carriage. Darnay urges his uncle to acknowledge and remedy the wrongs the family has committed. That same night, the Marquis is murdered by Gaspard, the father of the dead child. Darnay eventually returns to England. Six years later, the Bastille is stormed and the French Revolution begins. This prompts Darnay to return to France in order to save a loyal family's servant from the revolutionaries. When his identity is revealed, Darnay is arrested and brought to trial.

Doctor Manette and Lucie join Darnay in Paris. The sympathetic testimony of Doctor Manette at trial secures Darnay's release, but Darnay is rearrested shortly afterward. An unidentified party and Defarge accuse him of criminal offences. At the new trial, Defarge testifies against Darnay and declares that Doctor Manette is Darnay's second accuser. Defarge presents papers he discovered in Doctor Manette's Bastille cell, in which Manette had recorded the crimes perpetrated by the Évremonde family (Dickens 301). The papers reveal that Darnay's family was responsible for Manette's unjust imprisonment. Darnay is condemned to death.

Sydney Carton tricks Barsad, a prison informer, into granting him access to the cell where Darnay is held. Carton drugs Darnay and arranges his escape, taking his place as the condemned man. While attempting to prevent the Manette family from fleeing Paris, Madame Defarge is killed in a struggle with Miss Pross. Darnay and Lucie escape to England, while Sydney Carton sacrifices himself and goes to the guillotine in Darnay's place (Dickens 301).

The French Revolution as Historical Setting

A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel. While most novels are set in a recognizable place and time and may refer to actual events and people, the historical novel places figures from real life in major narrative roles — having them interact with fictional characters and participate directly in events. Authors of historical novels aim to dramatize a particular era for the reader, bringing historical people and events to life by combining imaginative reconstruction with facts drawn from records and other historical sources.

Authors of historical fiction typically have a point to make about the historical processes that produced particular events, or about the psychological difficulties faced by the people involved. Charles Dickens chose the French Revolution, which took place between 1789 and 1793, as the foundation of A Tale of Two Cities (Sorensen 6). He selected the French Revolution not only because it was a dramatic historical event, but also because it centered on ordinary citizens with whom he could identify. The events of the Revolution were thrilling, inspiring, chaotic, and horrifying — all factors that generated profound social upheaval.

The causes and effects of the Revolutionary period stretched across many decades, as Dickens indicates, but the central events took place between 1789 and 1793 (Sorensen 6). During this period, all political power resided in the hands of the king and the landholding classes — the clergy and the aristocracy. The vast majority of the population belonged to the Third Estate, comprising peasants, professionals, and the middle class (Hennelly 218). The First Estate (the Clergy) and the Second Estate (the aristocracy) enjoyed numerous privileges, including exemptions from taxation. Members of the Third Estate paid taxes, and failure to do so — along with other minor violations — led to harsh punishments. Scores of innocent people found themselves confined in miserable cells through the notorious lettres de cachet (sealed letters) (Glancy 9). These letters empowered the nobility and ultimately the king to detain anyone without cause or trial. It was such a sealed letter that condemned Doctor Manette to eighteen years in the Bastille.

Although these scenes occupy only a few chapters of the novel, they are rendered with harrowing intensity. Dickens makes clear that the French Revolution was inevitable, and that many of those who suffered its consequences had, in one way or another, brought it upon themselves. The predictability of the terror and the social injustices is underscored through imagery such as: "My Lord is lolling in bed with four liveried footmen serving his chocolate and the poor starving outside" (Glancy 69). The Revolution arose from centuries of oppression that had reduced the French peasantry to a sub-human existence. The story reflects on the French Revolution; Dickens regards its outcomes as inevitable, though the underlying causes could have been prevented. Had the wicked nobleman been capable of genuine reform — like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol — there would have been no Revolution, no guillotine, and no jacquerie.

Conclusion

The historical and critical literary techniques employed by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities highlight the complex organization of the novel and its profound effect on the reader. Dickens brings together the historical dimensions of the Victorian era with detailed examples drawn from both the Victorian social context and the French Revolution. The Victorian revolt occurred late in the Victorian era and forms a crucial turning point in the novel. It represented a rebellion against entrenched power, much like the upheaval of the Revolution itself. The novel thus illuminates two historical rebellions across two generations, each marked by distinctive conflicts and social problems.

The challenges within society were deeply connected to family life, which in turn fueled broader social injustices. What occurred within families set in motion events that reverberated throughout the whole of society and ultimately transformed it. A Tale of Two Cities therefore depicts both the social upheaval brought about by revolution and the difficult, fragile process of restoring social order in its aftermath.