Written to Inspire

Charles Dickens wrote a Tale of Two Cities to illustrate how the French Revolution impacted the lives of everyday people in London and France (Victorian Web). Much social and political turmoil that the revolution initiated was largely due to an impoverished nation’s rampant unrest. The wealthy nobles at Versailles lived lavish lifestyles, and never turned their heads to the rest of France’s growing socioeconomic hardships. Meanwhile, ninety-seven percent of the French population was in poverty. This correlates to Dickens’ purpose because Charles Dickens grew up in a poor family, and he certainly related well to the French Revolutionaries. Given Dickens’ childhood background, he knew what it was like, partly, to be a member of the “Third Estate.” His sympathy for the underprivileged class’ desire to revolt is the foremost reason why Charles Dickens’ chose to write a Tale of Two Cities.

The author’s own personal experiences are reflected through the novel’s reoccurring theme of imprisonment.

Dickens’ father was incarcerated when he was merely a child, and that affected Dickens more than words could describe. Because of his father’s absence, young Charles Dickens’ was forced to endure an imprisonment of his own. This was not a literal internment, however, it was an imprisonment of the emotions. One can see Dickens’ own emotional imprisonment through his integration of several characters, especially Lucie Manette. Like the author, Lucie’s father was imprisoned before she could remember. Both Lucie Manette and Charles Dickens suffered from emotional imprisonment as a result of their fathers’ literal confinement. Given this obvious parallel, one can conclude that Dickens integrated his own experiences, in order to develop the novel’s central theme of imprisonment.

Dickens, in part, wrote A Tale of Two Cities to guide Parisians down a path of prosperity. A Tale of Two Cities was published several decades after the French Revolution occurred. The year of its publication, 1859, is still immensely significant to the work as a whole. At the time of its publication, France was experiencing Louis-Napoleon’s overthrow of the French monarchy. In a sense, this period of French history could be considered the Second French Revolution. Because of France’s revolutionary state, the country as whole suffered from cosmic societal tension. In contrast, Great Britain, at the time of the novel’s publication, underwent an age of political stability. Because of this stability, the Industrial Revolution swept through England, providing a whirlwind of prosperity to the nation. London’s political solidity differed vastly from Paris’ social insecurity, just as depicted in a Tale of Two Cities. This fact goes to show that times hardly changed since France’s First Revolution. Because of the two cities’ direct influence on each other’s social norms, Dickens wrote this novel, partially, so that Parisians would gravitate to a more “English-style” government. Had France done this, Dickens argued, the nation could have experienced prosperity, as England had.

Tone, mood, and theme are represented in the novel by use of symbols. The author certainly integrates a grave-like tone when describing the events of the French Revolution. Dickens uses physical objects to symbolize this dire and ghastly tone. To symbolize terror, for instance, Charles Dickens portrays “seven gory heads on pikes” (Dickens 210). To symbolize mood, Dickens. In regard to the theme of tyranny, Dickens mentions “there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France.” King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are the obvious two symbols that support the tyrannical theme.

Works Cited
“Discovering Dickens – A Community Reading Project.”Discovering Dickens. Stanford
University, n.d. Web. 21 May 2015.
Baysal, PhD, Alev. “Carlyle’s Influence upon “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859).” Carlyle’s
Influence upon “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859). Victorian Web, n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.