Class Blog

“Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even in handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sadden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish” –(31).

As a class, we discussed the significance of this passage at a metaphor for the war that would later happen in France—the wine was meant to symbolize blood. While I agree that this metaphor is a possibility, I feel that there is more going on within the passage than just the imagery of spilt blood running down the streets. The scene that Dickens depicts is one that is, at the least, chaotic. Mothers are using their headwear to absorb wine to feed their children, and others are using everything that they can to stop the flow of wine, so that they may gather it all for themselves. Simply put, it is a scene of pure desperation.

            If I am to go along with the assumption that this scene is meant to metaphorically replace blood, from war, tainting the streets red, then I feel that I would fail to acknowledge the layers that are set up within the scene. Dickens’ portrait is not one that takes place solely on the ground, but up above, too. There is the mention of “lookers-on up at high windows” (31) telling those down below where to go to gather wine. Is this not more indicative of the social hierarchy in both England and France, than of the oncoming war? For those down below are depicted in such desperation to feel the need to, quite literally, pounce on the spilt wine, that they lose all sanity for a moment. Though, I am aware that the late 18^th century was not a time of great hygiene, I am sure that most people did not eat or drink from the ground often. Nevertheless, this is what the scene portrays—people doing whatever they could, despite the pieces of earth and other debris that would have been inevitably intermixed, to absorb the wine.

            Though not obviously, I feel that there is a connection from this scene to the scene within the Cruncher’s household as young Jerry is the spitting image of his father, though smaller, and follows his every demand. I feel that there is a strange parallel set up here between the two, which uses the different elevations as metaphors critiquing the social standings of the time. Even though one scene is more chaotic than the other, the image of height is used and associated with power. As height is only able to be used as a comparison between two things, thereby the more height one has, the more power they hold over the smaller being to which they are being compared.

Thus, I feel this scene is a direct reflection, and even critique, of the social standings of the time. Those down below, who are in the middle of all the chaos, are being directed by the onlookers who sit up above. There is not only a level of separation within the actions of the two groups, but in height. This quite literally sets up a hierarchical scene where those above direct those below. Moreover, those above are yelling from their windows, balconies, or at least some elevated surface that protects them from the chaos below. Whereas those down below are using their bodies as ways to contain the wine. While one has protection, and directs with their voice, the other uses their body and follows the orders of those above.

“‘There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so,’ Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way. The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight.” (Dickens, 98)

These ghostly footsteps seem to be a heavily recurring theme in Dickens’ writing, as they keep popping up all over the place. The characters seem to have different beliefs as to what these footsteps mean: Lucie believes they are the temporal echoes of people who have yet to enter her and her father’s lives, and so she harbors a benevolent attitude towards them; Charles Darnay seems to have a bit of a more snarky attitude towards them, not really believing that they are anything in particular, as evident in the way that he almost teases Lucie about them (being that he doesn’t seem to be able to hear them); but Sydney Carton has a more braced and paranoid attitude towards these footsteps, believing them to be of some great crowd that will crush them all beneath its feet.

“And I hear them!…Here they come, fast, fierce, furious!” (Dickens, 98). As Carton exclaims these words, Dickens attributes it all to him actually just mistaking the approaching storm for the sound of thundering footsteps. But what if this is just Dickens’ own verbal subtlety at its finest? He claims that Carton is actually hearing just a normal storm, but what if Dickens is implying that the footsteps are the storm? Carton may be the most correct one out of the three in regards to what the footsteps actually mean. The story, at this time, takes place in the calm before the storm, the years building up to the French Revolution. And, (spoiler alert), the latter part of the story will take place during the actual revolution. The footsteps that Carton hears, then, are in all likelihood the thundering approach of these revolutionaries, who are about to enter their lives in a big way.

This is not the only time that Dickens alludes to an eventual uprising of the people: when Madame DeFarge looks into the Marquis’s eyes, when the Marquis is killed, when there are multiple Jacques’s who could have killed the Marquis, and all of them are suspects, when the commoners attack the vehicles said to hold spies (this also contains a very foreshadow-y and relevant quote: “…for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded.” (Dickens, 150)), etc. These commoners, Madame DeFarge, and countless other people are alluded to no doubt be a part of the thundering footsteps that belong to an enormous, bloodthirsty crowd who will eventually fall upon Lucie, Darnay, and Carton…and may claim one of their lives in the process.

“Thus, the rustling of an Angel’s wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie in a hushed murmur–like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore” (Dickens 203).

The text surrounding this passage describes the worries that Lucie faces in her life: she thinks constantly of the echoes of the people and events that have played roles in her life. In the first six paragraphs of Chapter XXI from Book II, years fly by in Lucie’s life. Without fully concentrating on what is happening, the reader could miss the death of Lucie’s child. Only two paragraphs are devoted to the event, and the narrator never even directly states what happened.

When her child dies, he seemingly ascends into heaven on his deathbed, creating an image of the Darnay family as blessed by God. This holiness is evident in the narrator’s description of Lucie’s son’s death. The “echo” that Lucie hears when her son dies is the “rustling of an Angel’s wings.” The sound is soft, mild, and comforting. The sound is connected with domesticity, as we can imagine the rustling of sheets or a bed. The death of this child contrasts with the rest of those who have thus far died in the novel; there is no violence or horror in his passing. Moreover, the boy leaves earth accompanied by an “Angel,” therefore placing him in a category of a being innocent enough to merit divine accompaniment into heaven. The narrator further promotes this idea of the child’s divinity by stating that his echo had in it a “breath of Heaven.” For Lucie, this is soothing.

The idea that her child’s echo comforts Lucie in her darker moments presents itself in the description of how she hears these echoes. There are no haunting footsteps in the echoes of her son’s death; there are the “Sighs” of wind through a garden with a “little garden-tomb.” These Sighs come from the natural world and the loss of purity. They reflect sadness, but not fear. For Lucie, however, she enjoys the solace of the fact that her child entered into heaven. The divine and comforting sound of the Angel’s wings combine with and the worldly sighs that drift over a tombstone, and they mix to produce the “breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore.”

In conclusion, Lucie is almost in a trance of calmness after her child’s death. Although it might appear that she is not terribly affected by the event, she is in reality torn between her devotion to the divine and her belief in heaven and her own worldly pain from losing her child. She responds to this pain not unlike her father responded when he was locked away: she relies on a rhythmic, ocean motion to rock her back to a place of comfort and security that she would have otherwise lost.

“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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucie goes to see her father shortly after they speak of her impending marriage. She goes to him in the dark while he is sleeping. This scene is very similar to the scene in which Lucie first meets her father. They are in a dark room. She advances towards him in the dark. Both passages portray her as a spectral figure moving through the dark like an angel of light. For example, in the passage where Lucie first meets her father the novel describes how the light shifts from the face of Doctor Manette to the face of Lucie (51). She becomes “like a spirit beside him” (51). The later passage in which Lucie is checking on her father in the middle of the night she places a “needless candle” to one side and continues “creep[ing]” forward leaving the “shadow[s] at a distance” (231). Lucie is the figure that creates commonality between the two scenes. She is the ethereal creature that appears at the side of the Doctor when he most needs her.  She is a guiding force out of the darkness. She is the light. However, in the first scene she is the light arriving and in the latter she is the light leaving.

Lucie’s ethereal nature as a light has an impact on the mental health of others, particularly her father. The Doctor is unconscious in both situations of Lucie’s appearance. He is “unconscious of the figure [Lucie] that could have put out its hand and touched him” when she moves toward him in the room above the wine-shop (51). He moves from a state of being unconscious of her presence to being cured by it. The second scene is less psychological in his unconscious; he is physically asleep (231). However, the second scene has the Doctor moving from a consciousness of Lucie, their conversation about her upcoming marriage, to an unconscious state. The move from conscious to unconscious, unlike the move from unconscious to conscious, causes a reappearance of Doctor Manette’s illness for the nine days after she departs for the first half of her honeymoon. I believe Lucie’s ability here described in two paralleling cases concerning the mental health of her father, could also potentially be used in relation to other characters like Charles Darnay or Sydney Carton, though future research will have to be done in order to verify if these suspicions are reasonable or fanciful.

Welcome to The Nineteenth-Century Novel, Spring 2017

Please fill out the following information on your index cards:

1. Name
2. Preferred personal pronouns (she/her; he/him; they/theirs; or other)
3. Hometown
4. Class year
5. Email and phone #
6. One interesting fact to help me get to know you
7. On the BACK side and to share with the class—What do you already know about the 19th century?  In other words, what is one thing you know to be from the 19th century, or illustrative of the 19th century? (This might be literary, but also a fact about history, fashion, culture, geography, recent TV adaptions, & etc.)