Week 15 to 17: Themes of Class, Fate and Injustice. Symbolism and other related themes

Class Struggle

Social inequality and class conflict were sources of violent disruption and revolution in France. For generations, aristocrats like Monsieur have thought of nothing else except their own pleasure and luxury. Dickens loves to demonstrate how rich the rich actually are. The narrator sarcastically parodies the pretentions of the upper-classes by describing how four servants are involved in serving an aristocrat his morning cup of chocolate, and noting that “Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men”. Not only are the French aristocrats presented as spoiled and lazy, but they are also shown to be heartless and lacking in any regard for the lives of the lower-classes, as one guy even needs four servants (count them: FOUR) to make his hot chocolate every morning. It’s exactly this sort of excess that breeds discontent… especially when the poor are on their hands and knees in the street licking up drops of spilled wine. The French Revolution began as a critique of the aristocracy; as Dickens demonstrates, however, the "classless" formation of the new French Republic becomes yet another form of class violence. Someone’s always in power. And the powerless always suffer. As, Monsieur cruelly tells the working class Parisians that “I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth”. The theme of class adds an important element of moral complexity to the novel because Dickens presents both the cruelty of the upper-classes and the brute violence of the lower-classes in equally damning terms.

One of the elements that makes the story so thrilling is his incorporation of the theme of fate. Dickens incorporates innumerable symbols to enforce this theme. The echoing footsteps, the storm, and the water are all symbols that reflect the theme of fate by demonstrating the inevitability of your fate.

The echoing footsteps written in the novel are meant to inspire the idea of all of the people that are going to come into the characters’ lives. Dickens’ character Lucie Manette is listening to a storm with her friends when she says, “I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-by into our lives” (Dickens 78). This quote indicates that Lucie has some premonition of people who will enter her life. While Lucie may think she has some idea of what and who are coming into her life, she has no idea what direction fate will take her. She does not know if she will meet good people or bad people, and all she can do is wait and be patient. Patience is a virtue when it comes to fate, because fate plays out on its own. Further into the conversation Charles Darnay asks of Lucie, “Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?” (78). Mr. Darnay, like all humans, is curious about his fate. Humans are extremely curious about their future, otherwise fortune-tellers would not be in business. The reason for this is most likely a mix between people’s curiosity and their obsession with control.

Madame Defarge with her knitting and Lucie Manette weaving her "golden thread" both resemble the Fates, goddesses from Greek mythology who literally controlled the "threads" of human lives. As the presence of these two Fate figures suggests, A Tale of Two Cities is deeply concerned with human destiny. In particular, the novel explores how the fates of individuals are shaped by their personal histories and the broader forces of political history. For instance, both Charles and Dr. Manette try to shape and change history. Charles seeks to escape from his family's cruel aristocratic history and make his own way in London, but is inevitably drawn "like a magnet" back to France where he must face his family's past. Later in the novel, Dr. Manette seeks to use his influence within the Revolution to try to save Charles's life from the revolutionaries, but Dr. Manette's own forgotten past resurfaces in the form of an old letter that dooms Charles. Through these failures of characters to change the flow of history or to escape their own pasts, A Tale of Two Cities suggests that the force of history can be broken not by earthly appeals to justice or political influence, but only through Christian self-sacrifice, such as Carton's self-sacrifice that saves Charles at the end of the novel.

The theme of fate is represented by the echoing footsteps, the storm, and the water with the idea that one cannot stop their fate from proceeding. Dickens uses many symbols throughout A Tale of Two Cities that aid in the promotion of the theme of fate. These three symbols demonstrate the idea that one’s fate is unchangeable and there is a reason for that. The symbols used in this book to expose the theme of fate indicate that Dickens believes that fate is powerful force not to be messed with. Dickens relays the theme of fate being unchangeable in an effective and exciting way that captivates readers and makes A Tale of Two Cities a marvelous read.

Dickens uses some powerful symbols to make the story come alive for the reader. A symbol can be an object (or series of objects), an event, or even a person. When a person functions as a symbol, we sometimes call him or her an archetypal character. Symbols stand in for, or represent, some concept or theme that the author wants to stand out for the reader. The symbol might be small and at first seem insignificant, but later we realize that the symbol is there to call attention to something important to our understanding of the story.

Early in the book, we encounter the wine shop of Monsieur and Madame DeFarge, who play a larger role later in the narrative. The first time we meet them, the event is the breaking of a full wine cask in the street in front of their shop. As the wine spills out and collects among the stone pavement of the street, people rush to drink the wine by whatever means possible. Soon after, the poor people have just a few moments of merriment before the misery of their daily lives returns. Dickens uses this symbol in two ways. First, the eagerness of the people to drink spilled wine from the filthy Parisian street symbolizes the extreme state of poverty and hunger that the average people of Paris experienced before the Revolution. Also, the brief euphoria and merriment of the wine-drinkers symbolizes the way in which the peasants of Paris revolted against the royal and wealthy, and the mob behavior that Dickens found disturbing.

Shortly after this scene, when we first meet Madame DeFarge, she is described as knitting quietly while other events go on around her. Later in the story, we know that she is actually one of the main villains of the story, and that her knitting has a sinister aspect. We later discover that she is knitting a registry of all who are enemies of the Revolution. Another symbolic use of the idea of knitting is that of the Fates from Greek mythology. These goddesses were in charge of weaving the thread of life that determined each child's lot in life. They also determined the time of death. In some way, Madame DeFarge is knitting the fate of doomed men of France as she knits their names into her registry.

Shoes and the making of shoes enter the story in one simple way and one more complex way. Have you ever had some period of your life when everything seemed at its worst? During that time, you may have turned to some simple activity to distract you from misery and maintain sanity. This is how the unfortunate Dr. Manette survived so many years of false imprisonment: by learning the trade of making shoes.

The guillotine, a machine designed to behead its victims, is one of the enduring symbols of the French Revolution. In Tale of Two Cities, the guillotine symbolizes how revolutionary chaos gets institutionalized. With the guillotine, killing becomes emotionless and automatic, and human life becomes cheap. The guillotine as a symbol expresses exactly what Dickens meant by adding the two final words ("or Death") to the end of the French national motto: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death."

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens accurately describes social injustice during the French Revolution. One’s social class define one’s role and importance in society. Such classes were defined as: the rich, working class, and the poor. The working class along with the poor were looked down upon by the rich, inferior to them. The rich had all of the access to medicine, doctors, and were able to sway politicians and their beliefs, whereas, the poor and the working class often died from lack of medicine, poor quality housing, and not enough food.

A Tale of Two Cities presents a nuanced view of the French Revolution. During the period preceding the Revolution, the aristocracy is abusing their power and bringing suffering to people as well as to France in general. The narrator describes how “on inanimate nature as well as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency… towards a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.” However, while Dickens criticizes the social injustice and suffering created by the old system, he also shows the horrors perpetuated by the Revolution. In describing the fall of the Bastille, Dickens paints a vivid picture of “the remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them.” Even if the Revolutionaries have good reasons to try to change the system, they become dehumanized in their violent struggle to do so.

By the time Dickens was writing, the events of the Revolution were over, but England was plagued by its own problems with social and class injustices. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens uses his critique of both the conditions leading up to the Revolution, and the Revolution itself as a warning to his English audience. He connects the cold and selfish behavior of the aristocracy to the revolutionaries’ violent demands for justice. On a political and also a personal level, the Evremonde family is punished for generations of exploiting others. This storyline serves as a cautionary warning to the English nobility not to become complacent or exploitative. At the same time, the negative representation of figures like Madame Defarge cautions against using violent means to achieve political goals. Through characters like Sidney Carton, Jarvis Lorry, and Miss Pross, the novel suggests that true change comes from individuals who act in unselfish ways, and prioritize loyalty to others.

In the novel, the Bastille symbolizes the nobility's abuse of power, exemplified by the unjust imprisonment of Dr. Manette by Marquis St. Evrémonde. Yet the Bastille is not the only prison in A Tale of Two Cities. The revolutionaries also unjustly imprison Charles in La Force prison. Through this parallel, Dickens suggests that the French revolutionaries come to abuse their power just as much as the nobility did. The theme of imprisonment also links to the theme of history and fate. For instance, when Charles is drawn back to Paris because of his own past actions, each checkpoint he passes seems to him like a prison door shutting behind him.

Throughout the novel, we see several characters in physical prisons. “The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net, or were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could not have felt his freedom more completely gone.” The narrator here reveals that when Darnay returns to France to help his former servant, he feels as though his actions are under constant surveillance.. However, the atmosphere caused by the revolution leads Darnay to feel as though he is in prison even when he is a free man. His constant feeling of imprisonment and oppression reflects the overpowering sense of suspicion in France after the revolution.

Much of the action of A Tale of Two Cities takes place in Paris during the French Revolution, which began in 1789. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens shows how the tyranny of the French aristocracy—high taxes, unjust laws, and a complete disregard for the well-being of the poor—fed a rage among the commoners that eventually erupted in revolution. Dickens depicts this process most clearly through his portrayal of the decadent Marquis St. Evrémonde and the Marquis' cruel treatment of the commoners who live in the region under his control.

However, while the French commoners' reasons for revolting were entirely understandable, and the French Revolution was widely praised for its stated ideals of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," Dickens takes a more pessimistic view. By showing how the revolutionaries use oppression and violence to further their own selfish and bloodthirsty ends, in A Tale of Two Cities Dickens suggests that whoever is in power, nobles or commoners, will fall prey to the temptation to exercise their full power. In other words, Dickens shows that while tyranny will inevitably lead to revolution, revolution will lead just as inevitably to tyranny. The only way to break this cycle is through the application of justice and mercy.

Love acts as a driving force in the narrative of A Tale of Two Cities. It is love that reunites Lucie Manette with a father she has never known. After Dr. Manette has been imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years, Lucie Manette learns that her father has been freed. She finds him a broken man who perceives himself as merely a shoemaker, an occupation he has been taught while imprisoned. Now staying in a lodging of his former manservant, Ernest Defarge, Dr. Manette does not recognize his grown daughter, but when he catches sight of her hair, an old memory returns to him. He takes from a blackened rag "not more than one or two long golden hairs," and he marvels as old memories of his wife return to him in the presence of the young woman. Lucie holds her father lovingly and says, "If you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! ...I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service...." (Book the First, Chapter 6)

Aided by the competent Mr. Lorry, Lucie Manette brings her father to England, where she can care for him. With Mr. Lorry's friendship and his daughter's love, Dr. Manette regains his health in England. Later, he returns this love by permitting her marriage to Charles Darnay, the son of one of the two brothers who caused his arrest and imprisonment, who has fled France after the start of the revolution.

Darnay pledges to love and cherish Manette's daughter and to protect the physician, as well, "...dear Dr. Manette, I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death." (Book the Second, Ch. 16)

Further in the narrative, Darnay finds himself returning to France and risking his own safety in order to defend his agent, Théophile Gabelle, imprisoned by the revolutionaries for his connection to the Marquis St. Evrémonde, Charles's uncle. When he returns to France, Darnay is himself arrested as an Evrémonde, the enemy of the revolution. This arrest brings Dr. Manette to his defense, but he is unsuccessful as Darnay is imprisoned.

It is only the completely unselfish love of Sydney Carton that saves Darnay from the guillotine. Earlier, he has pledged his unselfish love to Lucie, and he keeps his promise: "For you, and for anyone dear to you, I would do anything.... Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you!"( Book the Second, Ch. 13 )

Carton makes the ultimate sacrifice as he gives his life so that Lucie can have her husband returned to her by doubling for Darnay, who has been sentenced to the guillotine. Then, having learned that her revenge against the Evrémondes has been foiled, the vengeful Madame Defarge rushes to destroy the wife of Charles Evrémonde. But the fiercely loyal servant Miss Pross defeats her. When Madame Defarge attacks her,

Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle they had. (Book the Third, Ch. 14) Miss Pross tells her enemy that she will hold her until one of them faints or dies. In their struggle the gun Madame Defarge holds is fired off, and the hate-filled Therese Defarge falls to the ground.