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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ... it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair��

So begins A Tale of Two Cities, a perennial favourite. It was an instant success when it was first published, and its popularity has remained steady ever since, as one of the best selling novels of all time. For many, it is their most loved novel by Charles Dickens.

A Tale of Two Cities is Dickens’s second shortest completed novel, possibly his tightest plotted and most dramatic novel, yet in many ways it is the least “Dickensian��. It is one of only two historical novels Dickens ever wrote, and he wanted to try out a few new ways of writing, to celebrate the launch of his new periodical.

At this time Dickens felt very at home in France, speaking French fluently, and identifying so much with the French character that he sometimes viewed himself as almost a Frenchman in exile. He despised any parochial or narrow-minded thinking he might see in English people, and frequently poked fun at them in his writing. He travelled extensively, and wherever he went he carried his friend, Thomas Carlyle’s “History of the French Revolution��, published in 1837, with him, reading it over and over again. Dickens jokingly claimed to have read the book 500 times. In truth he admired and revered his friend rather more than the feeling being reciprocated; Carlyle tended to view Dickens as a mere “novelist��. But Dickens was determined to meticulously research the historical background to his latest work, and used Carlyle’s book as a reference source.

Attempting to imbue his new way of writing with more gravitas, Dickens tried to curb, or at least subdue, some of his own habits of fanciful imagination. After criticism of his earlier slips in “Barnaby Rudge��, he had resolved to make this account, although fictionalised, an historically accurate a portrayal as possible. Along with the less discursive style, he paid less reliance on character development and humour, both more usual indicators of his style. Some readers maintain they do not associate Dickens with humour, and I personally feel that that is due in large part to their familiarity with his later works, especially this one. If this is the only Dickens novel one has read, it is possible to miss much of its quirky humour.

A Tale of Two Cities has been dramatised countless times, and in common with many others I am drawn to each dramatisation. The story is a violent and bloody one, with acts of heroism and intrigue, secrets and lies, imprisonment and torture, sorrow and loss, terror and madness, panic and frenzy. It describes in detail the depth of depravity a human can sink to, and also instances the pinnacle of an almost unimaginable force for compassion and altruism. The characters once read about here, stay in the mind for ever; they are spell-binding, whether good or evil. There is much mystery, and the development of the story is so tightly plotted that the tension mounts to almost unbearable limits. The horrors described are both explicit and totally believeable. After much thought, then, I have rated it five stars. A story which endures and continues to be retold, with images which permeate each new generation’s consciousness, which is so powerfully written and can move the reader to tears each time they read it, deserves no less.

Do I like it? No, not really. I have to steel myself to read this each time. But then I don’t enjoy Dostoevsky either, and Dickens was one of his favourite writers. So this takes nothing away from my reluctant admiration for the novel. It is a deeply spiritual work, with the main theme of resurrection sitting very firmly in a Christian context. Being “recalled to life�� is a major theme throughout the novel; in fact Dickens at one time considered using “Recalled to Life�� as the book’s title.

“Buried how long?��
The answer was always the same: “Almost eighteen years.��
You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?��
Long ago.��
You know that you are recalled to life?��
They tell me so.��

Of course the story is shrouded in mystery. “Recalled to life�� refers to several strands and episodes in the story, as well as being a metaphor. It is possible to enjoy the story without necessarily picking up quite how embedded in the novel all the Christian references are. One might see a vaguely spiritual thread of redemption running through, and an idea of a better future life, without picking up on the myriad references to blood, river, cleansing, water, shrouds, love, light and golden threads binding families together.

Take one tiny but telling detail at the climax of the book,

“The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.��

What, if anything, might the number 23 signify? The 23rd Psalm possibly? A psalm which is often understood by Christians as an allusion to the eternal life given by Christ? In the story, it refers to (view spoiler)[Sidney Carton, sacrificing himself to the guillotine in the final scene. In other words the 23rd victim is a Christ-figure, who is willingly executed by massed crowds, baying for blood, in the culmination. His death thus serves to save the lives of others, ensuring that his own life gains meaning and value. (hide spoiler)] The central message of the book is that sacrifice is necessary to achieve happiness, and this is a further pointer, reinforcing the idea. Dickens liked to make his meanings crystal clear.

A Tale of Two Cities has 45 chapters, and was published in 31 weekly instalments to boost the sale of Charles Dickens’s new literary magazine, “All the Year Round��. Between April and November 1859, Dickens also republished it as eight monthly sections in green covers. This was a departure from his usual way of working, since all but three of Dickens’s previous novels had appeared only as monthly instalments. He was therefore under even more time constraints to write each episode, and he felt this acutely. He did say at the time that he thought it was “the best thing he had ever written��, but he tended to say this a lot! His marriage to Catherine was coming to a painful and very public ending, and he was embroiled in a clandestine relationship with Ellen Ternan. As usual he was under a phenomenal amount of pressure, and was beginning to feel the weight of his commitments more than ever. This is reflected in the more sober feel of this novel.

Although written in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities is set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, and starts in 1775. It has a comparatively small cast for a novel by Dickens, and we follow just a few individuals through the years building up to the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny, in 1789, the dark years following, and the aftermath of the French Revolution. Although describing cataclysmic social and political events in France, the novel brings this to life by focusing on just a few characters, and the effect on their lives.

The intimacy with which we know these people, is contrasted with the mass hysteria of the crowds. We know these people; yet we also know and recognise the menace brimming just under the surface, the seething surges of hatred and panic, the mob mentality and the evil deeds people can be driven to by centuries of oppression and poverty, the hate and revenge engendered by a callous indifference to their suffering. A tiny detail from the beginning is when the cruel Marquis Evrémonde kills a child by running his cart over the boy, and is more concerned with whether any damage has been done to his carriage. This is an incredibly poignant scene, and we sense the brooding resentment and hatred; the heartless indifference and callous cruelty of the privileged aristocracy. The Marquis is an archetype of an evil and corrupt social order, almost the aristocracy’s “everybody��, but portrayed very convincingly as an individual.

For those who are reluctant to believe a classic novel can truly terrify or revolt them, please think again. An early depiction of a broken wine cask outside a wine shop, vividly describes the passing peasants�� savage and desperate scrambles to lap up any drops of the spilling wine.

“The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there��.

Such foreshadowing makes us shudder. We know from history what is to come. This grotesque and subhuman behaviour indicates both the starving poverty of the French peasants, and the metaphorical hunger for political freedoms. But there is no rhetoric here. We read an account of the wild dance of the terrifying desperation-fuelled manic ritualistic dance, the “Carmagnole��, and gruesome details of a person being hacked to death. Dickens’s descriptions force us to believe the novel’s contention, that violence is a natural part of any and all humans, given the right circumstances.

“Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.��

“When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained—not shown—yet always ready.��

The “Reign of Terror�� is well named. A surging mob of “horrible and cruel faces ... the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise ... hideous ... all bloody and sweaty ... howling ... staring and glaring with beastly excitement.�� Dickens knew people inside out. Not only is one of his characters named “the Vengeance��, narrowing and focusing her personality down to one devastating aspect, but a counterpart to this is his genius at personification. “The sharp female called ‘La Guillotine’��, with her unremitting thirst for blood, is the most formidable character in the entire story. She is imbued with a superhuman power. (So strong is this image in my mind, that I automatically typed “she�� rather than “it��.)

“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; —the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!��

“It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.��

Such savage sardonic writing will make you shudder!

Giving objects personalities is a hallmark of Dickens’s writing. His novels also contain many symbols and double meanings. It is possible to read A Tale of Two Cities as a nailbiting adventure story, intensified by the knowledge that many of these were actual events, and yet metaphors and symbols abound. We have doubles in characters, parallels and contrasts. We have shadows and darkness, both literal and metaphorical. The story start in gloom and mist, and the apprehension continues throughout.

From the very start too, we have the theme of Resurrection. This can be seen as the novel’s major theme and purpose, and it can also be traced in episode after episode, even down to the in-joke of the novel, the “resurrection man�� Jerry Cruncher, “an honest tradesman�� by day, but who spends his evenings as a grave-robber, or body-snatcher.

“Resurrection men�� were a reality. By the 18th century the medical professions were in dire need of fresh corpses to use in medical training. These could only be obtained legally from excuted murderers. Therefore a ghoulish trade began. Surgeons and anatomists alike turned a blind eye to their provenance, and looked to “resurrection men�� to supply their demand.

The novel is peppered with other quirky bon mots,

“Mr. Cruncher ... always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it��

but they are sadly rarer than usual. Dickens had a massive public following, yet he desperately wanted to be part of the elite literary establishment, and resented the tag “Mr. Popular Sentiment�� sneeringly given him by a fellow author, Anthony Trollope.

But Dickens could not resist his nature entirely, and did not keep a check on his impish and grotesque sense of humour. Whenever the blood, gore and horror become too much we are entertained with ghoulish episodes involving Jerry Crunchers’s hair-raising exploits, or stories of Jerry and his wife, who function as a sort of Punch and Judy sideshow. There are slapstick parts even in such a grim tale, though most of the humour is black indeed. Dickens had a penchant for ghouls and ghosts, as well as positively revelling in blood-curdling scenes.

For instance, he had witnessed a beheading by guillotine in Rome in 1845 and described a year later in “Pictures from Italy��. It is a careful study; a detailed and close description. Dickens stored everything in his mind, waiting for the proper time to reanimate these grotesque images, and did so with vigour and brutality in his scenes about the executions.

We see the horrors of the guillotine, the waves of hysteria and brutishness of the crowd. We see individuals blinded to reason by their passions, and swerving allegiance on a whim. We witness the hopelessness and despair of those enmeshed in the threads, both metaphorically and also literally, (view spoiler)[in the code of Madame Defarge’s knitting. Madame Defarge’s knitting symbolises her victims�� fate—death at the hands of a wrathful peasantry. (hide spoiler)] This strongly echoes Greek mythology, linking vengeance to fate. “The Fates�� are three sisters who control human life, weaving and sewing. One sister spins the web of life, another measures it, and the last cuts it. Whether or not we remember the direct reference when reading, the pointers are there. A wealth of significance is waiting to seep through, or strike us like a shaft of light.

And even in the midst of the unbearable horror, when we are dreading to turn the next page and are sinking in a mire of darkness and despair, we find a ridiculous death. The encounter to the death between (view spoiler)[ Miss Pross, with her unswerving ridiculous faith in her English superiority,
and the terrifying, fearsome, Madame Defarge, (hide spoiler)] is both unexpected and hilarious. An earlier, less experienced, Dickens would have written the former as a one-dimensional comic character, yet both these two have much depth and ambiguity.

And ask any two readers, including all Dickens’s many illustrators of this novel, to describe Madame Defarge, and you will be likely to receive two totally different answers. Yet this formidable personality is one of Dickens’s top creations.

“Tell Wind and Fire where to stop ... but don’t tell me.��

“T��é��è������ Defarge “harvests�� bodies; a common idiom too of La Guillotine. In contast, the angelic “L�ܳ������� Manette’s name means “light��; she shines a beacon of hope throughout the novel.

A theme of imprisonment relates both to the mind and to incarcerated bodies, golden threads may be three strands of beautiful hair, or metaphorically of life, as may the mending of roads. There are the darkened regions both in prisons, and in the mind. And there are the dark, musty, quaint annals of Tellson’s bank. Tellson’s bank, incidentally, was based on “Child & Co bank�� which was founded at Temple Bar, on the site Dickens describes in the 1660s.

Dickens always used real locations wherever possible. The Manettes lived in Soho Square, Clerkenwell was Mr Lorry’s area, Whitefriars was where the Crunchers lived. All these, and the Old Bailey, are familiar places to Londoners of today. Parisians are equally familiar with the locations of the Place de la Révolution, now called the Place de la Concorde, La Conciergerie prison, now used mostly for law courts, Notre Dame, La Force prison, and the Place de la Bastille. Saint-Antoine, where the Defarge’s wine shop was located, also exists. At the time of A Tale of Two Cities, the Bastille prison stood at its western edge, but Saint-Antoine actually became part of Paris in 1702.

Sometimes it is even possible to identify specific shops or inns. At one point, two of the characters, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, walk down Ludgate hill to Fleet Street, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here they have “a good plain dinner and good wine.�� Very probably this was an inn called “Ye Old Cheshire Cheese��, a favourite eating place of Dickens himself which had been rebuilt after the great fire of 1666.

The three parts, “Recalled to Life��, “The Golden Thread�� and “The Track of a Storm�� each contain several chapters, and each chapter heading is succinct, perhaps just two words, precisely describing what is to follow, without revealing it. The chapter headings alone are miniature masterpieces, and a world away from his earlier sentences taking up a full page. I have not told the story here, nor much about the characters, but both are easy enough to find.

A Tale of Two Cities remains a novel I am ambivalent about. I do not like what the author is saying to me, and that colours my view of it. Even at the start of this reread, I was tempted to view it as a lesser novel. Nevertheless, the more I consider it, the more highly I find myself obliged to rate it. If I put aside my love of Dickens, and my hopes of another, more enjoyable type of novel from my favourite author, I have to rate this as a masterpiece.

If you have never actually read anything by Charles Dickens, please do not start with this one! Yes, you may be tempted. It is short and has an irresistible storyline. It’s probably the one you were directed to at school, too. Yes, it gets 5 stars even from me. But if you read this first you will miss so much of his humour, and of his sheer joi-de-vivre. He wanted this to be a history-driven novel, where the incidents and story would fuel the action, rather than his usual sort of book, where the plot was determined by the characters and the situations they found themselves in. Consequently it has a very un-Dickens like feel. Read it when you have a few others under your belt. Try “David Copperfield�� instead. That was his personal favourite.

But if you are familiar with Dickens’s style, and have not yet read this, be prepared for a breathtaking ride. You may need to steel yourself for a grim read, and will find commanding, powerful descriptions to chill you to your core. You will find a past full of destruction, but may see a future of hope and potential. And just occasionally, you will glimpse unexpected quirky moments, which could only ever have been penned by “the Inimitable�� Mr. Dickens.

The ending of the novel, known and loved by millions, is like the beginning, a favourite classic quotation. In both, Dickens is making use of a clever literary device: “anaphora��. He repeats a word or phrase over many lines, and this makes it more rhythmic and more memorable to us. We feel both that it encapsulates a rare truth, and also that it feels musical.

Yet our memories betray us. Nobody ever says these beautiful and noble lines in A Tale of Two Cities. They are said in the author’s voice—not by the character whom we remember as saying them. The author is dreaming, and taking a step back out of the book. He quite deliberately puts these words into an imagined fancy, rather than his character. Surely only Dickens could have pulled this off with such conviction—and such style.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.��