A Tale of Two Cities - Allegory and/or Apologia

My first official classic of 2013 is what I term a Classic classic--it's one of those top five or ten books that just about everyone has either heard of, been forced to read in school, or shows up on a Jeopardy question in the easiest category.  My list of Classic classics includes The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, and A Tale of Two Cities.

For some reason, I never got around to reading A Tale of Two Cities until now but what a wonderful treat. It is every bit as good as its reputation and is the best Dickens novel that I've read.  I loved just about everything about it--the tight focus of the plot, the limited cast of characters, the interwoven themes of redemption/resurrection/forgiveness/sacrifice/retribution, the historical setting, and all the doubles (cities and characters).  I'm looking forward to reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde later this year, and comparing both to The Picture of Dorian Gray.  I really like doppelgangers!

And then there's the writing--of all his novels, I feel that in this one Dickens is not showing off, preening by inventing character after character, and meandering his way to a point.  It's focused, tight, and it works. There are some vividly beautiful passages (I already blogged about his first description of Sydney Carton, which took my breath away), and some stunning imagery (e.g., the sun and the moon, rising and setting, illuminating horrific scenes and blessing domestic ones), all of which combine to make a great novel. It's a brilliant premise for a novel, and Dickens executes it brilliantly.

Now that I've gushed sufficiently, I'll get down to what I really want to talk about in this post and what I thought about whilst reading the novel.  I've heard the theory that the characters an author invents are actually facets of himself and the story a novelist writes is ultimately a story about himself.

With regards to A Tale of Two Cities and Dickens, I totally subscribe to this theory.  While hundreds of term papers have been written on how Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are two contrasting aspects of a single individual, namely Dickens, and it's now fairly well-documented and accepted that Lucie Manette was modeled on Nelly Ternan, Dickens' mistress, It strikes me that the characters of Dr. Manette and Jarvis Lorry are also aspects of Dickens and reflect facets of his relationship to Nelly/Lucie.

The novel was written in 1859, shortly after Dickens had irrevocably broken his marriage.  After years of moaning, he had moved out in 1858 and established a separate residence from his wife.  In the introduction to the novel, he acknowledges that he came up with the idea for the book whilst acting in Wilkie Collins's play, The Frozen Deep, in 1857 with members of his family and friends.  One of those friends was Nelly Ternan, an actress, who along with her sister and mother had been recruited to help fill out the cast.  Dickens fell in love with Nelly, and in a relatively short time, set her up in her own household and assumed the role of lover, father, husband, caretaker, benefactor, and champion of not only Nelly but her mother and sisters.

In a way, it is easier for me to see Dickens in Jarvis Lorry (i.e., the benevelent business man who toils for years for others--rescuing, managing, and organizing the lives and cares of those around him) and Dr. Manette (i.e., the intelligent, capable man who became obsessessed with work during his years of imprisonment, and who slips into dementia when severely stressed), than in Carton and Darnay.   Carton and Darnay are handsome, young, noble (though one does a good job of being a reprobate), and worthy of Lucie's love.  They are the lover aspect of Dickens, albeit a Janus-type lover.  Mr. Lorry is the caretaker and organizer side of Dickens, and Dr. Manette is the manic artist (note that even Dr. Manette has a split personality!) who must be cared for even while he is caring for others.

Not content to stop thinking along these lines, it also occurred to me that Madame Defarge can be seen as representative of Dickens' wife Catherine, and Dr. Manette's time in the Bastille as the 18 years that Dickens felt himself to be "buried alive" in their marriage.  While the Dickenses were married for 28 years before Dickens walked out, their early years together were happy ones.  Taking this even further, I can see in Miss Pross, Lucie's companion, Georgina Hogarth, Dickens' sister-in-law, who remained loyal to him after the separation and kept house for him.  It is not insignificant that Miss Pross was rendered deaf after defeating Madame Degarge, just as Georgina must have been deaf to her family and friends who railed at her for deserting her sister for Dickens.

Finally, getting back to Carton and Darnay, I can see in Sydney Carton's assertion of his will, his insistence on sacrificing himself for Charles Darney and Lucie, Dickens' own vindication of the assertion of his will to break his marriage and defy social norms so that he could create a new life with Nelly. 

One of the motifs throughout the book is weaving--Madame Defarge and The Vengeance are the Fates from Greek mythology, controlling the destiny of the mortals.  Dickens repeatedly talks about how they knit the records of the people they denounce. And Book 2, the book in which Lucie reigns as the lovely goddess with a plane tree in her backyard, no less, is titled "The Golden Thread."  The overall tone of the novel is oppressive with destiny.  There is an inevitability as France moves into chaos and terror and Darnay is trapped tighter and tighter within the madness.  But Sydney's assertion of his will overcomes Darnay's preordained fate to die for the sins of his fathers.

Darnay's destiny was to die, but Sydney's will overcame that fate.  Free will conquered destiny so that love could reign.  Whether it was subconscious or not, for me A Tale of Two Cities is a reflection of Dickens' love for Nelly Ternan and what it meant for him to break with his wife and family in order to make a new life with her.

Ever since I read Peter Acrkyod's bio of Dickens roughly twenty years ago, I've really had a problem liking Charles Dickens as a person.  Reading A Tale of Two Cities has helped me understand the man behind the story and be more sympathetic to how he felt about his life, his work, and the people he loved.  Whether he saw his story as an allegorical tale, I see it as an apologia for the actions he took in his personal life.

If you're interested in reading more about Dickens' relationship with Nelly Ternan, I can recommend Claire Tomalin's wonderful book, The Invisible Woman.

A Tale of Two Cities counts for books read in two of my 2013 challenges...Back to the Classics, of course, and Historical Fiction.

Now I have to decide which adaptation to watch.  Any suggestions?