“Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson’s was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy (stubbornness) with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop […]” (51)
In this passage, although it has been mentioned before, the reader is being formally introduced to Tellson’s, a bank that becomes a central setting in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. What immediately stuck out to me in this description of Tellson’s is that Dickens describes it as “the triumphant perfection of inconvenience.” Not only is the statement an oxymoron, but it also ties into the background of one of the main characters, Lucie. As an orphan who was told that her parents were dead, Lucie ended up being taken from France to England, where she was raised at Tellson’s Bank. What makes this significant is that in the novel, Lucie is often referred to as a being with what was culturally known as “perfection” at the time (and for the most part, still is when it comes to standards of beauty for women)—young, fair, radiant, well-mannered. In a novel about a dark time in history, although she is not meant to be in England, Lucie, a Frenchwoman, represents the hidden beauty in a time of strife being the “triumphant perfection of inconvenience” by being accidentally sent as something that the gloomy setting of Tellson’s needs.
From a historical standpoint, the bank could be described as such a miserable place because it is a bank, which at the time of the French Revolution, was not a particularly thriving location, as most of France was suffering from extreme hunger and property. The vivid description of the atmosphere, namely how upon entrance, one is likely to fall down the stairs and how it is a “miserable little shop” relates to the other characters that are associated with it. Because of the economic disparity at the time, it is described as a place where documents and money go to die. However, money is not the only thing that is going to die at Tellson’s. Namely, Mr. Cruncher, who resides outside of Tellson’s and is a body-snatcher contributes to the death and inhumanity of the bank; as his “profession” of digging up dead bodies quickly becomes one of his more identifiable character traits, This adds to the characterization of the setting of Tellson’s as a location where things go to die—whether it be documents or people, or in Cruncher’s case, people who are already dead. My big point is that in a book about the French Revolution, it makes sense that one of the central settings has a connection to death and being miserable, however, if one looks far enough, one is able to find beauty within it.
I think your analysis is really interesting. I’d never considered that the phrase “triumphant perfection of inconvenience” might connect Lucie to Tellson’s more directly. Tellson’s has a location in both England and France, much like Lucie. Because both the bank and Lucie exist in both England and France, your historical point about the morbidity/uselessness of banks during the French Revolution might also be applied to Lucie, though perhaps that’s a stretch. I’d love to see a fleshing out of the notion you purpose at the end: how does Tellson’s represents beauty as well as misery and death/decay?
You’re take on this part of the novel is an interesting one. In class, we just discussed the dark, gloomy aspects of Tellisons. Bringing Lucie into the picture is an new angle I hadn’t thought about before. This ties into the idea from my blog post, which is basically that while Lucie is an important character in the novel, she herself has no dimensions and is just used as a tool to further the plot. You say that “she is something that the setting of Tellison’s needs”, I agree, she is a light in the darkness, not just for Tellisons but also for her father, Darnay and Carton.