A Tale of Two Cities

The idea of destiny looms large in A Tale of Two Cities. To take just one example, Lucie remarks that she imagines the footsteps echoing outside her house are “the footsteps of the people who are to come into [her] life, and [her] father’s” (107), and from that moment onwards in the novel, the footsteps do in fact function as a symbol of the approaching future. As Dickens depicts it, however, destiny is not so much a metaphysical as it is a natural force; rather than suggesting that certain events are supernaturally fated to happen, the novel leans heavily on the idea that particular kinds of historical events inevitably have particular kinds of consequences.

This is particularly true of the events that lead up to the French Revolution. Again and again, the narrator suggests that the actions of the Ancien Régime were bound to provoke a violent backlash; as Madame Defarge tells her husband, “Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every other. Can such things last?” (185) The guillotine, which in A Tale of Two Cities functions as the culmination of every awful human impulse, is therefore also the culmination of everything that preceded it: “There is not in France, with it rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror” (384-385).

What is true of society as a whole is also true of individual human lives. The forces that produce the Reign of Terror, for instance, also function as a kind of family curse for the Evrémondes; Darnay’s mother, for instance, says of her efforts to make amends that she feels her son “will never prosper in his inheritance otherwise […] if no other innocent atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of him” (343). This “presentiment” largely proves true; for all Darnay’s own sympathy with the peasantry, and his efforts to distance himself from his aristocratic ancestors, the sheer atrocity of those ancestors’ crimes persuades his jurors to sentence him to death. In the aftermath of his conviction, Darnay reiterates the idea that his circumstances are inevitable: “It could not be otherwise […] Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning” (347).

This of course proves to be untrue, but only because someone else (Carton) “atones” on Darnay’s behalf. History is generally an overwhelming force in A Tale of Two Cities. When describing the Revolution, the narrator often uses imagery related to tides and currents; he says of Manette’s efforts to free Darnay, for instance, that “the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him […] What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty—the deluge rising from below, not falling from above” (282-83). The implication is that the anger that has been unleashed after years of suffering is simply too powerful a force for individual action to override; in the case of the Evrémonde family, for instance, there is no doubt that someone will die, and the only possible question is who. With that said, Dickens clearly hopes that his readers will heed the warning in the novel and act to prevent events similarly taking on a life of their own in England.

Despite the novel’s focus on broad and impersonal historical trends, it’s also interested in the domestic sphere. In fact, the two themes are interrelated, since Dickens often depicts family life as a refuge from the violence and chaos of society at large, and perhaps even a place where positive change can begin. This in turn speaks to the role of women in the novel; 19th-century gender norms largely confined women to a domestic role, but also maintained that in fulfilling that role well, they could exert a powerful moral influence over the public sphere as well.

Dickens’s idealization of home and the family is most obvious in the character of Lucie Manette. Lucie first appears in the novel as the selfless and devoted daughter of Doctor Manette, who alone possesses the ability to draw him out of the stupor induced by almost two decades of imprisonment. Significantly, her ability to do this is linked to her ability to provide a calm and happy home for him; during their very first meeting, she mentions “a Home there is before us, where [she] will be true to [him] with all [her] duty and all [her] faithful service” (48). The capitalization of “home” in this passage hints that the home Lucie provides will be a home in its ideal form, and this largely proves true.

As the novel progresses and Lucie’s family expands to include a husband and child, the narrator describes her as “weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives” (218)through details as small as her decorative choices, which reflect her own goodness and charm. Arguably, Lucie’s “influence” does ultimately alter the course of public events, since it inspires Sydney Carton and therefore the sacrifice he makes at the end of the novel.

Because the family—and wives and mothers in particular—have such a powerful opportunity to do good in A Tale of Two Cities, the novel is quite critical of women who neglect their “natural” role. One sign of the brutality and corruption of the Ancien Régime is its disdain for the family and traditional femininity:

Except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world—which does not go far towards the realization of the name of mother—there was no such thing known to the fashion [of the aristocracy]. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up; and charming grandmamas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty (111).

Similarly, the aristocracy makes it all but impossible for the French peasantry to lead a “natural” family life—most obviously, by demanding sexual access to the wives and daughters of their tenant farmers.

In A Tale of Two Cities, the outrage felt by lower-class French women (most notably, Madame Defarge) over these assaults on their families becomes a powerful political force once the Revolution begins. The narrator depicts this anger as a threat to femininity in its own right—he says, for instance, that “there were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand” (375)—but to some extent it is simply the flip side of the conventional feminine role. The implication is perhaps that women’s devotion to their families will ultimately exert an influence in society, if only in a twisted form.