\u201cThus it had come to pass, that Tellson\u2019s 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\u2019s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop [\u2026]\u201d (51)<\/p>\n
In this passage, although it has been mentioned before, the reader is being formally introduced to Tellson\u2019s, a bank that becomes a central setting in Charles Dickens\u2019 A Tale of Two Cities.<\/em> What immediately stuck out to me in this description of Tellson\u2019s is that Dickens describes it as \u201cthe triumphant perfection of inconvenience.\u201d 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\u2019s Bank. What makes this significant is that in the novel, Lucie is often referred to as a being with what was culturally known as \u201cperfection\u201d at the time (and for the most part, still is when it comes to standards of beauty for women)\u2014young, 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 \u201ctriumphant perfection of inconvenience\u201d by being accidentally sent as something that the gloomy setting of Tellson’s needs.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cmiserable little shop\u201d 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\u2019s. Namely, Mr. Cruncher, who resides outside of Tellson\u2019s and is a body-snatcher contributes to the death and inhumanity of the bank; as his \u201cprofession\u201d of digging up dead bodies quickly becomes one of his more identifiable character traits, This adds to the characterization of the setting of Tellson\u2019s as a location where things go to die\u2014whether it be documents or people, or in Cruncher\u2019s case, people who are already dead. \u00a0My 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThus it had come to pass, that Tellson\u2019s 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\u2019s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop [\u2026]\u201d (51) In this passage, although it has … Continue reading The Setting of Tellson’s Bank<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3464,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138876,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2017","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3464"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}