Book Review: A Tale of Two Cities

The very first Dickens’ novel I read was A Tale of Two Cities – high school freshman English class.  The novel was handed to us with the instruction to read it.  No historical context, no instruction on how to read a Victorian novel.  The assumption was that the novel would impress us with what an important work it was.  After all, how many novels can you quote both the first and last lines? 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …”
 “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.”

Certain scenes stuck in my head:  the imprisoned Dr Manette quietly making a lady’s shoe.  Jerry Cruncher digging in the graveyard.  Miss Pross wrestling a gun out of Madam Defarge’s hands. 


So, the novel definitely made an impression on me.  I got that Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, similar in appearance, are distorted reflections of one another.  I got that Lucie’s sweetness saves Carton.  I got that Carton performs the ultimate sacrifice to save Lucie and her family.
The problem is that, as a freshman, I didn’t understand why Dickens was so challenging to read.  He has a distinctive storytelling method.  No other writers really write like him.  His use of language and imagery are unique. 

“Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate.  Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning’s chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.
 Yes.  It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips.  One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out.  It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens.  Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had bene ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.”

 I’m sure my teacher explained Dickens’ comic style, but I probably had a lot of trouble getting my head around the imagery in this scene.  Plus, since this was a classic novel, that meant it was heavy, so I didn’t dare laugh at it.
"It was the best chocolate;
it was the worst chocolate."After I graduated college, I started tackling Dickens more systematically, and eventually learned how to read him.  Since then, I’ve made it through all of his novels, many of them multiple times.  A Tale of Two Cities I’ve read probably four times.
But that doesn’t mean it’s one of my favorites.  In fact, I think it’s the most un-Dickensian novel he ever produced.  Much more historical in scope, the novel follows Darnay, Lucie, Dr Manette, and Carton through the rising storm of the French Revolution.  They are decidedly small chess pieces against the vast scope of events.  As a result, you really can’t cozy up to them.  Even Miss Pross, whose distinctly English toughness has a mildly endearing quality, remains at arm’s length.
So, why have I read it four times?  Because Dickens took such care in constructing the story.  He focuses attention on the rise and crash of the Revolution.  The characters are inexorably swept forward.  You can’t escape your own past, nor can you avoid the trampling feet of history.  But quiet acts of heroism do preserve humanity in the midst of the worst carnage. 
I always thought that London and Paris are set against each other as civilization versus brutality.  Yet this time around, I paid more attention to the criminal court scenes in London.  If Darnay were convicted of treason, he would have been executed in no less a brutal fashion (i.e., drawn-and-quartered) than the guillotine in Paris.  So, London is at least as cruel and deadly as the uprising Jacquerie of the Paris revolution.  Bloodshed can occur in the most apparently civilized societies.

I will always be impressed by the craft of A Tale of Two Cities, at Dickens’ focus on the essential rise and crash of the Revolution.  And that’s probably why I’ve come back to the novel multiple times, a curious desire to wrestle with the least Dickensian of novels.