Discovering Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities - Essay Example

How did London contribute to this change? How did people, both royal and lay descent, feel about the Revolution? By looking at the lives of Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette, and Sydney Carton, Dickens tries to provide readers with a more personal understanding of the French Revolution and how it affected individuals from different backgrounds. A Tale of Two Cities is considered as one of the Dickensian of all Charles Dickens’ work. Gone are the main characters with exaggerated mannerisms, the idiosyncratic speech of his earlier work.

This time, Dickens has dealt with social issues head-on, minus the comedy. Many critics say that as the Tale is about love, violence, and transformation, it is a representation of the major events and changes happening in Dickens’ life during the period. On the outside, Dickens was faced with a rapidly industrializing society. At the time, England was considered as one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but its political and social stability was in danger as the French Revolution planned to expand their territory.

Meanwhile, as turmoil in the English society increases, turmoil in Dickens’ life was also increasing. For one, his 23-year marriage with Catherine Hoggart was coming to a close. He has also discovered a new zest for writing and acting when he fell in love with the younger Ellen Ternan. A Tale of Two Cities embodied the irony of Dickens’ life and contradiction in society – a life of hope and despair, of joy and sadness, of love and hate, of prosperity and poverty – a theme which can be seen immediately from the beginning of the book, “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…” (Dickens 3).

Dickes used the various characters of the book to explain his own views about the royalty, the working class, and the ideals of the French Revolution. For example, the novel acts explains Dickens’ sympathy for poor families in the urban areas of England: “After having long been in danger of my life at the hands of the village, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and brought a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road, I have suffered a great deal. Nor is that all; my house has been destroyed—razed to the ground” (Dicken 425).

This is a direct description of Dickens’ own experience as he was forced out of his home to repay his family’s debt. Meanwhile, it is clear from the novel that Dickens’ had a mixed feeling when it comes to the French Revolution. On one hand, he uses Marquis Evrémonde to depict what is wrong with French royalty but then shows that they have redeeming qualities embodied by individuals like Charles Darnay. On the other hand, he uses Monsieur Defarge to explain the philosophical underpinnings of the Revolution, and Madame Defarge to show that some revolutionaries have become too irrational with their extreme hatred of the royalty.

Of course, at the end of it all, Dickens also shows a third option, the integrating idea of redemption in that people can change. Through Sydney Carton, Dickens shows that whatever people think of another may not necessarily be true. Through Carton’s love and sacrifice, Dickens showed that everyone will get what they deserve in the end.