A Tale Of Two Cities

Charles Dickens’ and his works are products of what’s referred to as the Victorian Era. Quite literally the time period lasting through the rain of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), it is often characterized by the height of the British Industrial Revolution. Authors of the period, Dickens’ in particular, discussed through there works social inequality and a sense of disgust with the shortcomings of class division. Dickens’, A Tale of Two Cities was no exception.

The idea for a Tale of Two Cities was derived from play in which Dickens’ himself was the heroin. The preface of the novel, as he describes, details the production of Wilkie Collins entitled The Frozen Deep. The play describes two men very much in love with the same woman. Ultimately one man, played by Dickens’, trades his life in effort to save his rivals. On a basic level, this is essentially the same story Dickens’ tells in A Tale of Two Cities.

Dickens’ novel, was published initially in series form in his own Literary Periodical, All Year Round. The story begins in 1775 just prior to the French Revolution. As the title suggests, The novel jumps fairly evenly between London, and Paris (Two Cities), taking time to describe the social atrocities of the time period. It must be noted that the historical substance provided in the novel was due largely in part to the work of Thomas Carlyle’s French Revolution. This was the primary, if not the only source Dickens’ referred to in maintaining the accuracy of the time period. It is from Carlyle’s exhaustive publication that Dickens’ is able to extract, and recreate many of the novels defining historical scenes. However the French Revolution in the novel “exits […]only insofar as Dickens’s characters vivify it, live through it, react to it and make its reality manifest to the reader”(Allingham) As suggested, Dickens’ did provide accurate historical context, the issues in there entirety, are more specifically discussed through the relationships of the characters.

In “Dickens and the Fiery Past: A Tale of Two Cities Reconsidered” by Robert Stange, Stange suggests that Dickens’ used the “integrate[ed…] personal lives of his characters with the wider pattern of history” (Stange). Going further to state, “the principal scheme of the novel to show the individual fate mirroring and being mirrored by the fate of the social order.” In saying this, one can view the relationships of the characters on a completely different level. If Sydney Carton, the alcoholic barrister, Charles Darnay, the aristocrat who hates aristocrats, and the woman they both love, Lucie Manette, are no longer just personalities, but elements of society, the novel begins to take on a much broader meaning. Probably the most obvious example of this is that of Marquis St. EvrÐ"©monde, Darnay’s uncle. The English and French translation combining to almost literally mean “Anglo-French Everyman”(Stange).

However, rather then the specifics of each individual situation, perhaps what become increasingly more relevant is the fact that all of these characters are fictional. This no doubt gives rise to what we refer to today as Historical Fiction. As Philip Allengham, author of “A Tale of Two Cities: A Model of the Integration of History and Literature” suggests,

In historical fiction, characters who never really lived undergo and give expression to the impact of historical events on the people who really did live through them. The result is not history (an accurate record of actual events), but a fiction in which an earlier age is rendered in immediate and personal terms through the joys, trials, sufferings,

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