Nation and Generation in a Tale of Two Cities Author(S): Albert D

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Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities Author(s): Albert D. Hutter Source: PMLA, Vol. 93, No. 3 (May, 1978), pp. 448-462 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461866 . Accessed: 13/12/2014 07:45

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This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ALBERT D. HUTTER

Nation and Generationin A Taleof Two Cities

It is the interplay of the personal and the social, cal identification to portray social upheaval and of the individual psychic development and the the restoration of social order. general political and economic evolution-with Nation and in the earliest each and the other . . . generation converge "causing" influencing event of A Tale Two -that makes for the social that chronological of Cities, powerful change Doctor Manette's of the Evremondes' we call history. story Bruce Mazlish,James and John StuartMill brutality (III, x, 303-15).5 The Evremondes rape a young peasant girl, wound her brother, T WO REVOLUTIONS, one generational then summon Manette to treat their victims. and the other political, determine the struc- When Manette tries to report these crimes, he is ture of A Tale of Two Cities. We require incarcerated in the Bastille. He writes a full ac- a combination of critical methods-literary, psy- count of his experience-damning the Evre- choanalytic, historical-to illuminate the novel's mondes to the last of their race-and hides this complex structure and its impact on different personal history in his cell. Defarge finds the readers. Lee Sterrenburg writes that Dickens' document and uses it as evidence against vision of the French Revolution may be influ- Charles Darnay, ne Evremonde. The events enced by "a personal daydream only he can Manette describes, a microcosm of the larger fully fathom. But he is able to communicate with narrative, trigger the major actions and reversals his readers because he has rendered his day- of the double plot. The rape itself implies social dream in terms of a publicly meaningful iconog- exploitation, a class-wide droit du seigneur. raphy."' Since A Tale of Two Cities is also a Conversely, one peasant's attack on his master tale of two generations, the iconography of anticipates the nation's reply to such abuse. The father-son conflict carries a particularly powerful Evremonde who raped the girl and murdered her social resonance.2 brother will later run down a small child from Dickens' novel was published in 1859, a year the Paris slums, and as a result will be "driven that Asa Briggs calls a "turning point" in the fast to his tomb." The retaliation denied one "late Victorian revolt against authority." This peasant, a generation earlier, is carried out by revolt originated "in mid-Victorian society. the revolutionary "Jacques." Even the Paris What happened inside families then influenced tribunal at which Manette's story is read reflects what happened in many areas of public life a struggle between parents and children: Ma- later."3 The major publications of 1859, from nette has condemned his son-in-law to death. The Origin of Species and Marx's Critique of Class conflict here reveals a hidden psycholog- Political Economy to Samuel Smiles's Self-Help, ical conflict that recurs throughout the novel. stand poised between the anticipation of a later Manette is taken at night and forced to witness ideological revolt and the still-powerful memory the aftermath of a violent sexual assault. His of the French Revolution. That revolution and abductors have absolute power, and any knowl- subsequent English social reform inevitably edge of their activities carries grave risk: "The changed Victorian father-son relations. But the things that you see here," the Marquis warns changing Victorian family, in turn, reshaped so- young Manette, "are things to be seen, and not ciety.4 As much as any other work of 1859, A spoken of" (III, x, 311). Violence and sexuality, Tale of Two Cities demonstrates the correlation combined with a mysterious nocturnal setting between family and nation, and it uses the lan- and a dangerous observation, suggest a primal guage of psychological conflict and psychologi- scene. Such scenes arouse anxiety about being 448

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Albert D. Hutter 449 caught spying, and they invariably reflect parent- rushed off to the Bastille, even meets his future child conflict.6 The political significance of this son-in-law. Manette is sought out by the Mar- drama intensifies its psychological meaning. quise St. Evremonde, who has "a presentiment Evremonde's absolute power, for example, re- that if no other innocent atonement is made" for sembles the father's absolute power over his the wrongdoing of her husband and brother-in- child. The novel's virtual obsession with spying, law, "it will one day be required" of little its comic subplot, and its descriptions of revolu- Charles (III, x, 314)-a prophecy as remarkable tionary violence all further suggest primal-scene as any of the "spiritual revelations" satirized by fantasies. But if we mistake this primal-scene Dickens in the first chapter. reading for a full explanation of the novel, we only succeed in isolating one meaning and sub- ordinating the others. We could as easily argue Like the story of Doctor Manette, the larger that the dominant class struggle-not simply in action of the novel turns on seeing what was the novel but in Victorian history-is being ex- never meant to be seen, an experience sym- pressed through the powerful language of child- bolized by the extensive use of a "Gorgon's hood trauma: the nation is symbolized by the Head." This mythical figure, which turned those family; a national and historical struggle is made who looked at it into stone, is now itself a "stone particular, and particularly vivid, through a per- face [which] seemed to stare amazed, and, with sonal and psychological narrative. The two opened mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked explanations are not mutually exclusive. But to awe-stricken" (ii, ix, 120).9 The novel begins by integrate them we must first analyze the whole opposing things hidden and things revealed. The work and locate the reader's experience in the passengers on the Dover Mail "were wrapped to structure of the text itself. It can be shown that the cheek-bones and over the ears, and wore the psychological chronology of the Tale's plot, jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, turning as it does on Manette's story, duplicates from anything he saw, what either of the other a psychological chronology common to the ex- two was like; and each was hidden under almost perience of most readers.7 as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as Manette's story is the narrative equivalent of from the eyes of the body, of his two com- a trauma: it recalls an event that precedes all the panions" (I, ii, 4-5). And we are repeatedly other action of the novel and organizes that ac- aware of eyes, hundreds of eyes, at critical tion, although it is not "recovered" until quite moments in the text, such as Darnay's appear- late in the novel. Modern psychoanalytic theory ance at his London trial: recognizes the retrospective quality of trauma, the way in which the individual reconstructs his Everybody present . . . stared at him. . . . Eager faces strained round and to a past life to conform with present conflicts and pillars corners, get invests a event with sight of him; spectatorsin back rows stood up, not thereby past significance- to miss a hair of on the floor of the some of it real, often some of it him; people imagined.8 laid their hands on the shouldersof the Manette's document stands in a similar relation- court, peo- before them, to themselves, at to the novel: within the structure of ple help anybody's ship larger cost, to a view of him-stood a-tiptoe, got upon the Tale it acts like a traumatic memory, reliving ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every the significant antecedent events of the entire inch of him. ("A Sight"-II, ii, 58) plot at the climax of Darnay's second trial. The At the document reveals the combination of public and Darnay's second Paris trial, Dickens halts private acts that informs the narrative; it records action by a momentary frieze of staring spec- the "primal scene" of the text itself. tators: Because Dickens makes this document the In a dead silence and stillness-the under hidden nexus of the it must bear a consid- prisoner plot, trial looking lovingly at his wife, his wife only erable The weight of coincidence. abused peas- looking from him to look with solicitude at her ants are the brother and sister of Madame father, Doctor Manettekeeping his eyes fixed on the Defarge; Ernest Defarge was originally Doctor reader, Madame Defarge never taking hers from Manette's servant; and Manette, before being the prisoner, Defarge never taking his from his

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 450 Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities feasting wife, and all the other eyes there intent ... the Marquis went on with his supper. He upon the Doctor, who saw none of them-the was half-way through it, when he again stopped paper was read, as follows. (iii, ix, 302) with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the The novel is filled with spies, from a hero twice front of the chateau. accused of spying, to the comic spying of Jerry "Ask who is arrived." Cruncher, Jr., on his father, to the spy Barsad It was the nephew of Monseigneur.He had been and "the great brotherhood of Spies" (II, xxii, some few leagues behind Monseigneur,early in the 211) who inhabit St. Antoine. Even the dead afternoon. He had diminishedthe distance rapidly, but not so as to come with men, their heads on Temple Bar, remind us of rapidly up Monseigneur on the road. (II, ix, 113) "the horror of being ogled" (ni, i, 50). And the novel closes with an obsessive parade of vio- The nephew of Monseigneur arrives and dines lence, the revolutionaries worshiping the guil- with his uncle. Their genteel conversation re- lotine and previewing its victims at mass trials. veals a deadly turn of mind, particularly on the Spying, like virtually everything else in this part of the Marquis, whose face novel, has two the other meanings-one public, . .was and The official like are in- cruelly, craftily, closely compressed, private. spies, Barsad, while he stood at his with of and of looking quietly nephew, struments repression representatives his snuff-box in his hand. the the men in But in other "fathers," power. Once again he touched him on the breast, as contexts, like the Cruncher scenes, children spy though his finger were the fine point of a small on their parents. In both cases spying expresses sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him the Tale's dominant conflicts. Thus the Gorgon's through the body. .... (, ix, 117) Head witnesses much more than the murder of Charles himself alludes to his uncle's the it sees the between However, Marquis: deadly struggle the is to com- two which is climaxed death-something Marquis quick generations, by implicit ment on: filicide and patricide. Dickens anticipates the public murders of the Revolution while suggest- "This property and France are lost to me," said ing the private conflict of Charles Darnay the nephew, sadly; "I renounce them." "Are both to renounce? France through the subtle mixture of two plot lines. they yours may be, but is the It is worth men- First, the Marquis-Charles's uncle, who is vir- property? scarcely from Charles's father tioning; but, is it yet?" tually indistinguishable "I had no intention,in the words I used, to claim ("Can I father's twin-brother, separate my joint it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow-" and next from himself?" inheritor, successor, "WhichI have the vanity to hope is not probable." down a child When [II, ix, 117])-runs (II, vii). (ii, ix, 118) the Marquis returns home, the child's avenger But the in his is mistaken. clings to the underpart of the Marquis's carriage Marquis, vanity, Before dawn, he will be "run in the (II, viii). The Marquis is vaguely uneasy when through" he learns that someone was seen hanging from very chambers where they speak, by the shad- who has moved in and out of his carriage, but by the end of the chapter his owy, gaunt figure his all with his thoughts have shifted to his nephew. He inquires thoughts day, trading places whether Charles has arrived and is informed nephew. The has desired the death of his "not yet." Early in the next chapter (ii, ix), the Marquis and more has Marquis believes he sees a shadow outside his nephew, Charles, covertly, imagined the sudden death of his father's twin. There window as he is eating, but the servants find is the but never the of nothing. And again, his vague uneasiness is re- suggestion, realization, both filicide and But the be- placed by an uneasiness over the arrival of his patricide. exchange tween the and his is framed renegade nephew. Dickens' description encour- Marquis nephew by the murder of a child and the murder of the ages us to feel one preoccupation merge with the other: Marquis himself. The former symbolizes the Marquis's murderous impulses toward his broth- "Monseigneur,it is nothing. The trees and the er's child, as well as the cruelty of the French night are all that are here." ruling classes toward their dependents, like the

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Albert D. Hutter 451 abuse witnessed by Doctor Manette eighteen device to free Charles from the Bastille; it is also years earlier. At the same time, the revenge that an attempt to solve an insoluble political di- follows is both an actualization of Charles's re- lemma. The revolutionaries justifiably overthrow venge against his father's surrogate and a gesture their rulers, but their hatred leads to excesses that shows the French peasantry rising up to that turn despised oppressor into sympathetic murder its rulers, as they will ultimately murder victim. The sins of the fathers are endlessly re- the father of their country in the revolutionary peated, from generation to generation, and act of regicide. Dickens clarifies these connec- Dickens' unrealistic solution creates a character tions when he describes the rumors that follow who, Christlike, will sacrifice himself for the the capture of the Marquis's assassin: sins of all mankind. But Carton's transformation from scoundrel to hero also indicates a ". .. he is brought down into our country to be guilty transformation. This executed on the spot, and ... he will very certainly deeper, psychological par- be executed. They even whisper that because he agon of irreverence, having mocked and antag- has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur onized Mr. Lorry, now achieves a sudden close- was the father of his tenants--serfs-what you ness to the old banker. He notices Lorry crying will-he will be executed as a parricide. . . . his over Charles's plight: right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his face . . . into wounds which will be made "You are a good man and a true friend," said in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be Carton, in an altered voice. "Forgive me if I notice poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and that you are affected. I could not see my father sulphur;finally . . he will be torn limb from limb weep, and sit by, careless. And I could not respect by four strong horses." (II, xv, 162) your sorrow more, if you were my father. You are free from that misfortune, however." (iii, ix, 293) That Darnay should flee such a country is For of hardly surprising, but the political reasons for the first time in his knowledge Carton, feeling and once he flight are intensified by his personal desire to Lorry sees a "true respect"; to Carton becomes avoid the retribution prophesied by his mother decides sacrifice himself, his for the sins of his fathers. And the futility of that something like an ideal son and rediscovers father in then thinks back to his flight becomes apparent with his return to Lorry. Sydney France after the Revolution. Darnay's fate is to youth, and his dead father: be forced, his conscious desire, into a against Long ago, when he had been famous among his with his fathers: his own father, deadly struggle earliest competitorsas a youth of great promise, he his identical his father-in-law. Al- father's twin, had followed his father to the grave. His mother though Darnay and Manette learn to respect and had died, years before. These solemn words, which love each other, their goodwill is repeatedly had been read at his father's grave, arose in his subverted by events. Charles's marriage to Lucie mind as he went down the dark streets, among the nearly kills Manette, and Manette's document in heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds turn condemns Darnay to the guillotine. The sailing on high above him. "I am the resurrection and the saith the Lord: he that believethin characters seem to be moved by something life, me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and who- larger than their individual desires, by the sins of soever liveth and believethin me, shall never die." a nation, which inevitably lead only to more sin, (III, ix, 297-98) to an orgy of murder and retribution. The political meaning of these acts is intensified by a deep These words dominate Carton's subsequent and persistent psychological theme, at times so feelings. He transforms his life by internalizing perfectly merged with the political that one and his father's imrage,using Lorry as a surrogate: the same act may be construed as personal re- his earlier aimlessness dissolves and a new mis- venge, patricide, and regicide. sion identifies him with the most famous-and If the murderer of Evremonde symbolically self-sacrificing-of sons. Carton begins to enacts Darnay's violence and vengeance, then achieve a sense of historical and personal iden- Sydney Carton enacts another side of Darnay's tity, and the novel ends with Carton reborn character and pays for the hero's aggression. through his namesakes, Lucie's son and grand- Carton's sacrifice is a convenient, if implausible, son. And with Carton's newfound strength and

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 452 Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities

purpose, Damay becomes "like a young child in The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a [Carton's] hands." Unconscious, Darnay is de- despot . . . but he who is the thrall of his own livered to old Manette and Lucie and carried out moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice" (Smiles, of France like a sleeping baby (II, xiii). This p. 3). The description fits Carton perfectly, at sequence suggests that, as the hero's double in- least until his conversion. Carton demonstrates ternalizes paternal authority and willingly sacri- his moral degeneration by willingly playing fices himself to it, the innocent hero may be jackal to Stryver's pompous lion. Their relation- reborn. ship in turn demonstrates the Victorian businessman's divided personality: he hopes to rise in the world but he must never become a The British world of business offers a differ- "striver," particularly in a field like law, where ent, more pragmatic solution to father-son strug- one must appear unruffled, cool, above all a gles. Samuel Smiles, a widely read apostle for gentleman. Dickens' social insight is conveyed the self-made man, speaks for a common British by caricature and specifically by a psychological chauvinism when he contrasts England and division that embodies an enforced social sep- France: aration, not unlike the two sides to Wemmick in Great Expectations. ... [the English system] best forms the social being, Smiles's ideal is to rise gracefully, working and builds the life of the whilst at the up individual, hard but never seeming to toil or manipulate. He same time it the traditional life of perpetuates the tells the of an architect who, in of nation . . . thus we come to story spite exhibit what has so extensive education and was been the marvel of ac- training abroad, long foreigners-a healthy forced to start "He determined to tivity of individual freedom, and yet a collective humbly: begin he could be obedience to established authority-the unfettered anywhere, provided employed.... he had the energetic action of persons, together with the uni- good sense not to be above his trade, form subjection of all to the national code of and he had the resolution to work his way up- Duty.10 ward .... he persevered until he advanced by degrees to more remunerative branches of em- This description integrates independent action ployment" (pp. 208-09). Charles Darnay does and submission to authority. Because Dickens' the same: France prevents such integration, unrestrained ... with great and selfishness and anarchy tear the country apart. perseverance untiring industry, he prospered. Although England has both mobs and unruly In London, he had neither to walk on abundant selfishness, the British control the cen- expected pavements of nor to lie on beds of roses: if tral conflict between sons and gold, fathers, indepen- he had had any such exalted expectation,he would dence and In a land of authority.1l opportunity not have prospered.He had expected labour, and he the individual submits himself to a generalized found it, and did it, and made the best of it. In authority, which he then internalizes-at least this, his prosperity consisted. (Ii, x, 123) according to Smiles and most other Victori- ans.12 The virtues of "promptitude," "energy," For Carton, however, such qualities are only "a "tact," "integrity," "perseverance"-the whole mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and list of ingredients in Smiles's recipe for success perseverance" (ii, v, 85). He denies his own am- in business-involve the same psychological dy- bition and projects it onto the gross reality of namic: turn external tyranny into internal cen- Stryver.13 sorship and control. Self-Help opposes external The two cities of Dickens' Tale embody two help. Patronage, money, support in any form very different public expressions of father-son inhibit imitating one's business "fathers" and, by conflict. In England, particularly in the world of struggle and hard work, repeating their success. business, repression is internalized: it becomes a Government itself is internalized: "It may be of psychological act rather than a political one. As comparatively little consequence how a man is public repression is diminished, internal aggres- governed from without, whilst everything de- sion is brought under control, and the generation pends upon how he governs himself from within. in power transmits its own authority-its own

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Albert D. Hutter 453 image-to those who follow. In France, political his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of repression is much stronger, as is the political the establishment. (i, i, 51) retaliation of the oppressed. Dickens distorted Although the obvious satire here may temper the reality of the French Revolution to fit pre- Lorry's heroism, it is, for Dickens, compara- cisely into this liberal vision of the causes of tively gentle, and its humor softens the antag- revolution (and the need for a prophylactic re- onism between the old and the young. Dickens is form), exaggerating the brutality and repression certainly not flattering in his appraisal of Tell- of the ancien regime and reducing the uprising itself to a of radical reac- son's-"very small, very dark, very ugly, very nightmare populist, incommodious" his criticism of tion.4 Dickens' historical distortion (II, i, 49)-but clearly this is checked states the British liberal attitudes dangerously antiquated operation prevailing a humorous a that, old- toward and reform, toward by acceptance, feeling political repression fashioned as it is, it men, trust, the value of business and free and, produces good enterprise, honor. Smiles, too, stresses the heroism of implicitly, toward the frequent, and frequently banking: unconscious, struggle between fathers and sons throughout the century. Trade tries character perhaps more severely than Jarvis Lorry is the ideal businessman. Busi- any other pursuit in life. It puts to the severest tests ness may be Lorry's defense against feeling, as honesty, self-denial, justice, and truthfulness; and he hints in his warning to Lucie that "all the men of business who pass through such trials un- stained are of as honour as relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are perhaps worthy great soldiers who their amidst the fire mere business relations" (I, iv, 21); but his prove courage identification with his Tell- and perils of battle. . . . reflect but for a moment thorough employer, on the vast amount of wealth entrusted even endows him with a mercantile daily son's, nobility. to subordinate . . . and note how com- that Tellson's customers would be com- persons Fearing paratively few are the breaches of trust which the seizure or destruction of docu- promised by occur amidst all this temptation. . . . the system ments-"for who can say that Paris is not set a- of Credit, which is mainly based upon the principle fire to-day, or sacked to-morrow"-he decides of honour, would be surprising if it were not so that he alone can protect their interests. His age much a matter of ordinary practice in business and personal safety are not at issue: ". . . shall I transactions. . . . the implicit trust with which merchants hang back, when Tellson's knows this and says are accustomed to confide in distant this-Tellson's, whose bread I have eaten these agents . . . often consigning vast wealth to persons, recommended their character . . . is sixty years-because I am a little stiff about the only by probably the finest act of homage which men can ren- joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to half a dozen old der to one another. (pp. 224-25) codgers here!" (II, xxiv, 225). Lorry's language demonstrates not only his chivalry but also his Through a characteristic reference to parents clear filial relation toward his "House," which and children, Dickens equates Tellson's with feeds him; his identification with Tellson's also England: "Any one of [the] partners would gives him strength and, significantly, youth. At have disinherited his son on the question of re- several points in this scene Darnay repeats his building Tellson's. In this respect the House was admiration for Lorry's "gallantry and youthful- much on a par with the Country" (II, i, 49). ness." Compare this mild satire with the savagery of Elsewhere in the novel, Dickens describes the Dickens' attack on other bureaucratic strong- peculiar business education provided by Tell- holds, like the Circumlocution Office of Little son's: Dorrit. The very name "Tell son" enjoins the paternalistic institution to reveal to its dependents the secrets of the House, it takes When they took a young man into Tellson's Lon- although a long time to do so. don house, they hid him somewheretill he was old. ridiculously Imparting They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until secrets to a son resolves not only generational he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould conflict but also the problem of spying. Wait upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, long enough, the "sons" are implicitly advised, spectacularlyporing over large books, and casting make the interests of the House your interests,

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 454 Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities internalize the father's authority, and all things sinister in the Evremonde twins and dramatic and will become known. theatrical between Carton and Darnay-is here the comic assertion of a common identity. Jerry, Jr., is a perfect replica of his parent, and a per- A Tale of Two Cities has been consistently fect parody of the conservative ideal. At first criticized for what Dickens himself called its annoyed by his child's curiosity, Jerry, Sr., fi- "want of humour."15John Gross writes: nally responds with favor because he realizes that this succession offers no threat at all; Above all, the book is notoriously deficient in family the son will forfeit his own to take on his humour. One falls-or flops-back hopefully on identity the Crunchers,but to small avail. True, the comic father's: "There's hopes wot that boy will yet be element parodies the serious action: Jerry, like his a blessing to you," Jerry, Sr., says to himself, master, is a "Resurrection-Man,"but on the only "and a recompense to you for his mother!" occasion that we see him rifling a grave it turns out (It, xiv, 156). to be empty, while his son's panic-stricken flight The father's pursuit of an "honest trade" has with an coffin in full is imaginary pursuit night- more than a mercantile meaning for his son, as marish rather than funny."6 Dickens' ambiguous language suggests throughout this Young Jerry's experience occurs in the chapter chapter: entitled "The Honest Tradesman" (II, xiv), and its which is indeed closer to There was a screwing and complainingsound down comedy, nightmare, and their bent were as if extends the "serious action" of the novel more below, figures strained, by a weight. slow the broke than Gross allows: "The Honest By degrees weight away thoroughly the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Tradesman" combines national, commercial, Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when and generational conflict. he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to Above all else, Young Jerry is "impelled by a wrench it open, he was so frightened,being new to laudable ambition to study the art and mystery the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped of his father's honest calling" (II, xiv, 153). We until he had run a mile or more. (II, xiv, 154) see this particular scene through the boy's own The wakes to see close-set, staring eyes, and the landscape reflects following morning, Jerry up his father his mother on their bed for Jerry's spying, his desire to see into the mystery beating that had the of his father's nocturnal expeditions: lamps something gone wrong during night, "wink," while the gravestones and the church something attributed to her praying or "flopping tricks"-a like tower spy in turn on the prying men and the term, "Resurrection-Man," that both and sex. peeping child. Jerry witnesses a peculiar form of parodies religion Jerry's surname "fishing": indicates his feeling for his wife, his desire to crunch her, and that mixed demonstration of fished with a They spade, at first. Presently the sexuality and violence characterizes his lan- honoured to be some parent appeared adjusting guage. "You have no more nat'ral sense of instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools duty," he tells her, "than the bed of this here they workedwith, worked hard, until the awful they Thames river has of a and it must striking of the church clock so terrified pile, similarly Young be knocked into Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his you" (II, xiv, 155). like his father's. (II, xiv, 154) Jerry's language, mysterious nocturnal affairs, parodies the sexual violence of the The language amuses us in part because it is Evremondes' rape described by Doctor Manette. sexually suggestive, with its "great corkscrew" In one sense the comic episode may be read as and the hair that stands up and stiffens. But such another primal scene: a boy spies on his father's language also comically expresses Young Jerry's mysterious doings at night and later witnesses ambition to grow up and become his father. His his father beating his mother on their bed; desire to find out what his father does and to throughout, the language is both violent and emulate him inverts the novel's dominant strug- implicitly sexual. At the same time, the comedy gle: the identical appearance of the Crunchers reproduces the combination of father-son con- defines their essential unity. Resemblance- flict and social struggle present in Manette's

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Albert D. Hutter 455 story and traced throughout the novel. Yet be- Dickens manipulates both emotional conflict cause it approximates a primal scene so closely, and its solution by "splitting" in the technical, the characteristic merging of violence and sex- psychoanalytic sense: his characters distance uality becomes here more grotesque than funny. their emotions from an immediate, and disturb- Such language, like Jerry's generally ambiguous ing, reality (thus Lorry's remark to Lucie about behavior, strains the text and limits its comic his lack of feeling or Carton's apparent ability to effectiveness.17 John Gross observes that the separate himself from everything except the resurrection theme cannot justify what Jerry "higher" emotions at the close); he divides a does; however, the resurrection theme is itself single ego into two (Carton/Darnay); and he subordinate to the larger thematic struggle be- splits the "object," allowing one person tween sons and fathers.18 The structure of "The (Charles's uncle) to bear the brunt of the hero's Honest Tradesman" reflects the structure of the hatred or aggression toward Charles's father. Tale: it is at once psychological and social, sug- Conversely, Dickens' use of doubles may suggesting both a child's vision of his parents' sex- gest, not splitting, but reunifying something once uality and the historical nightmare of the French divided or divisible: the comic identification of Revolution. The comedy revises the novel's Jerry, Jr., with his father or the larger movement central conflicts and offers its own resolution. between London and Paris, which connects But that resolution cannot be sustained, and seemingly disparate incidents and persons and both the language and the setting of the comedy ultimately unites the two plots. Even in the fa- too strongly reveal the nightmare that informs mous rhetoric of the opening, the balanced op- it. posites suggest their own ultimate fusion. The use of splitting in a work this long is too varied and extensive to justify simple praise or blame- Dickens' familial and political revolutions are splitting is primarily a descriptive term-but it expressed by his varied use of splitting through- should clarify the understandably divided critical out the novel, so that the theme of the work assessment of the novel.20 becomes as well its characteristic mode of ex- Fitzjames Stephen had originally called the pression. From the title through the rhetorically book's tone "thoroughly contemptible," while balanced opening paragraphs, Dickens estab- Dickens thought it could be the best story he had lishes the "twoness" of everything to follow: written.21 Sylvere Monod makes a more bal- characters are twinned and doubled and paired; anced appraisal, noting the special intensity of the setting is doubled; the women, as we shall the revolutionary passages but finding the origins see, are split; the historical perspective is divided of that intensity in a "personal interest" that between an eighteenth-century event and its breaks down the proper distance between author nineteenth-century apprehension. "Splitting" and subject. Monod at times seems to withdraw thus describes a variety of stylistic devices, par- his approval, but he is simply reflecting the ticularly related to character development and work's contradictory quality: "Few would refuse plot. But "splitting" also has two important to admit that the Tale is very much a contrived psychoanalytic meanings: a splitting of the in- product," he has recently written, "[or] that the dividual (specifically, the ego) and a splitting of contrivance is usually superb."22In addition to the object. That is, an individual may deal with a citing the lack of sustained comedy in the novel, specific problem, relationship, or trauma either critics have complained about the contrivance by dividing himself or by dividing the prob- and sentimentality of Carton's role and about lematic "other" (parent, loved one). Splitting is Dickens' oversimplification of a complex histori- a fundamental mode of psychological defense cal event.23 I have suggested that the failed and a key concept in the development of psy- comedy of the Crunchers derives, in part, from a choanalytic theory. It originated in a description failure to control, or sufficiently disguise, the of schizophrenia and is now recognized as a cen- primal-scene material implicit throughout the tral mechanism of multiple personality; but it text. Dickens' historical oversimplification re- may also be part of a normal adaptive strategy flects, as we have seen, a merging of family and for coping with any intense relationship.19 class struggles that was both characteristic and

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 456 Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities particularly problematic in the nineteenth cen- and silk and ribbon.... Hatchets, knives, bay- tury. Carton's role, both as a "double" to the onets, swords." And these images in turn antic- hero and as a melodramatic scapegoat at the ipate the hellish dance of the revolutionaries: close, develops the dual conflicts of the novel; indeed, much of the sentimentality of Carton-as- They advanced, retreated, struck at one another's Christ is derived from his conversion, via Lorry, hands, clutched at one another'sheads, spun round one into the good son and the good conservative. alone, caught another and spun round in pairs, until of them While those were Carton's solution is that of any son-or class- many dropped. down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun that willingly accepts the pain or injustice in- round together: then the ring broke, and in separate flicted upon it or rulers, and such a by parents rings of two and four they turned and turned until solution is not to most particularly satisfying they all stopped at once, began again, struck, readers. In his calm and heroic peculiarly way, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and Carton stands for the ideals of conservative be- all spun round another way. . . . No fight could lief, in the family and the nation, but he finally have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so assumes too many meanings and is required to emphatically a fallen sport-a something, once connect too many threads of the novel. He suf- innocent, delivered over to all devilry-a healthy fers chronically from meaning too much in rela- pastime changed into a means of angering the tion to too many other characters and themes blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such as was and, like Manette's document, unites too grace visible in it, made it the many how and incidents; he becomes more strained as he be- uglier, showing warped perverted all nature were comes more things good by become. The maidenly important. bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child'shead Other kinds of in A Tale Two splitting of thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this Cities far more successfully project the text's slough of blood and dirt, were types of the dis- central conflicts, precisely because they require jointed time. no resolution. Dickens' caricature of the lion This was the Carmagnole. (iII, v, 264-65) and the jackal, for example, exploits an inherent, unresolvable tension in his social subject. The Both passages sharply juxtapose opposites: division of labor between Carton and Stryver murder and celebration, ritual and anarchy, vio- powerfully suggests not only Carton's divided lence and delicacy. The dance itself is vividly self but the divided goals and morals of Vic- sexual, orgiastic in fact; and witnessing a per- torian business. Divided imagery, like split ob- verse "sport" more awful than any fight, an in- jects, also contributes to the intense passages nocence now delivered into hell, intensifies the describing the Terror: terror of this scene. A Tale Two False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck of Cities reflects the Victorian upon them, and their hideous countenances were repudiation of sexual or powerful women by all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, contrasting the dull but idealized heroine and and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement her more dangerous, sexual counterpart.24 and want of sleep. . . . men stripped to the waist, Madame Defarge is an almost mythically fright- with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men ening woman with male strength, but she has as in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; well an animal-like beauty:25 men devilishly set off with spoils of women's lace and silk and with the stain ribbon, dyeing those ... [a] beauty which . . . impart[s]to its possessor trifles and through through. Hatchets, knives, firmness and animosity. ... a tigress. ... all to bayonets, swords, brought be sharpened, Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her were all red with it. (II, ii, 248-49) rough robe. Carelesslyworn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird and her dark hair The passage effectively combines images and way, emotions that the Victorians looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden normally separated. in her bosom, was a loaded hidden at In the scenes the women are pistol. Lying revolutionary her waist, was a Thus and more sharpeneddagger. accoutred, characteristically stronger savage than and walkingwith the confidenttread of such a char- the men. Dickens further confuses sexual roles acter, and with the supple freedom of a woman delicate by connecting and deadly images: "lace who had habitually walked in her girlhood, bare-

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Albert D. Hutter 457 foot and bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, cie's love for her father is "an affection so un- Madame Defarge took her way along the streets. usual, so touching .. that it can have few paral- (IIi, xiv, 344-45) lels": Many subsequent versions of Madame Defarge, "when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, in film and in illustration, have made her a girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck. witch. The Harper and Row cover to A Tale of ... in loving you she sees and loves her mother at Two Cities, for example, shows a cadaverous her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves old crone, gray-haired, hunched over her knit- her mother brokenhearted,loves you through your dreadfultrial and in blessed restoration.I have ting, with wrinkles stitched across a tightened your known and since I have known face. The "Phiz" illustration, however, this, night day, you original in home." out Madame her dark your brings Defarge's beauty, Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. hair and her freedom"; if we "supple compare (ni, x, 126) this with two later illustrations of Lucie, we re- alize that Madame Defarge is a strong, dark- Most readers, unfortunately, do the same. haired version of the heroine.26 Characteristi- Dickens' violent and passionate French- cally, Dickens gives the Frenchwomen vitality, women characterize not only the Carmagnole conveyed negatively as animality ("tigress"), but virtually every set scene of the Revolution: and denies his heroine these qualities. The "The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded Frenchwomen infuse their vitality into the anger with which they looked from windows, "fallen sport" of the Carmagnole, until they ap- caught up what arms they had, and came pour- pear like "fallen women," inhabiting a world of ing down into the streets; but, the women were a violence and overt sexuality. For Madame De- sight to chill the boldest" (ii, xxii, 212). While the farge's sister, aristocratic brutality extends even rape of Madame Defarge's sister dramatizes to violation. The clearest antecedent of Madame the exploitation of personal "wealth," Madame Defarge herself is her compatriot, Mademoiselle Defarge turns beauty into power and violence, Hortense, from Bleak House. Hortense "would finally into terror. Her revenge is all the more be handsome," laments Dickens, "but for a cer- awful because it reverses the sister's helplessness tain feline mouth.... she seems to go about like -or, more generally, the assumed passivity of a very neat She-Wolf imperfectly tamed" (p. Victorian women and of the lower classes. 158). She is both attractive and frightening, and Madame Defarge is more implacable than her her violence is expressed by sexuality. When husband; her closest ally is a woman who per- Bucket tells Hortense that Mrs. Bucket has sonifies revenge; and the most murderous and of all is "the of helped to trap her, Hortense replies, "tigress- frightening figure figure the sharp like": female called La Guillotine" (III, iv, 259). The Frenchwomen embody Dickens' political moral: "I would like to kiss her!" ... the more violently you exploit and distort in one "You'd bite I Mr. Bucket. her, suspect,"says direction, the more violent and distorted will be "I would!" her "I would making eyes very large. the reaction. And Dickens frames his moral with love to tear her, limb from limb." (p. 742) the language of procreation and violation: "Sow Hortense virtually becomes Madame Defarge the same seed of rapacious license and oppres- when she applies to Esther for service, and sion over again, and it will surely yield the same Esther finds that the "lowering energy" of the fruit according to its kind" (III, xv, 353). woman "seemed to bring visibly before me some Throughout his career, Dickens split both his woman from the streets of Paris in the reign of hero and the hero's loved ones, particularly in a terror" (p. 320).27 setting of generational conflict. Monks, the vil- Lucie, by contrast, is the perfect Victorian lainous half-brother of Oliver Twist, and Uriah female, the ideal home companion, a loving Heep and Steerforth in David Copperfield estab- stereotype. She achieves blandness by playing lish a pattern of the hero's guilt and expiation both child and mother (and largely skipping that would later define the essential relationship anything in between), so that she is all things to between Carton and Darnay.28 In Oliver Twist all generations. Darnay acknowledges that Lu- there is also a simple parental choice-Brown-

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 458 Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities

low or Fagin-that becomes far more complex ens's books and damned as the worst. It is nei- in David Copperfield, when David, in his first ther, but it is certainly in some ways the least marriage, seems to behave like his hated step- characteristic. .."31 This essay tries to show, father, Murdstone.29 Dickens makes a more on the contrary, that in A Tale of Two Cities complex use of split egos and split objects in A Dickens is concerned with two connected themes Tale of Two Cities, although he handles splitting that preoccupied him throughout his career: the most successfully in the novel that immediately generational and political conflicts he repeatedly follows: Great Expectations extensively uses expressed through the technique of splitting. alter egos, and its action is built around Pip's However, because that technique is used so per- developing relationship to his various fathers- vasively in A Tale of Two Cities, it makes the Joe, Jaggers, Magwitch. By returning to the first- novel seem uncharacteristically concentrated in person narrative of David Copperfield, Dickens style and, at times, uncharacteristically strained united-internalized-the conflicts that were ex- or humorless. The novel's particular combina- ternalized in A Tale of Two Cities and never tion of individual psychology and broad social satisfactorily reunited at its close. Pip is both concerns thus accounts for its unique qualities, Darnay and Carton, he is both heroic and guilty, its intensity, and its failures. A Tale of Two and he even experiences the complex conflicts of Cities dramatizes two dominant conflicts of the the Victorian world of business, as described Victorian age-and of our own. here in A Tale of Two Cities.30 Edgar Johnson has written that "A Tale of University of California Two Cities has been hailed as the best of Dick- Los Angeles

Notes

1 "Psychoanalysis and the Iconography of Revolu- 4 In James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in tion," Victorian Studies, 19 (1975), 247. the Nineteenth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2 Dickens considered "Two Generations" as a pos- 1975), pp. 7-8, Bruce Mazlish writes: sible title for the novel. See Philip Collins, quoting from Industrial and scientific with Forster's Life, in "A Tale of Two Novels," Dickens revolutions, along political ones, posed a problem of cultural transmission that was Studies Annual, 2 (1972), 342. new in its intensity and placed an enormous strain on 3 Victorian People (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, relations. In the nineteenth the 1970), p. 298. Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Platt parent-child century most dramatic form this took was in a sense (The Wish to Be Free [Berkeley: Univ. of California heightened of father-son, i.e., generational, conflict. Much attention Press, 1969]) combine psychological and sociological has been given, and rightly so, to class conflict at this theories to discuss changing family and political patterns time as a mechanism of social I am from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. In change. suggesting that generational conflict is at least of equal importance. Psychoanalytic Sociology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1973), Weinstein and Platt stress a "funda- 5 All quotations from Dickens' works are from the mental articulation between personality and society as New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (London: Oxford action systems which stems from the 'unconscious' com- Univ. Press, 1947-59). All citations to A Tale of Two mitment in both systems to the same set of generalized Cities are given parenthetically by book, chapter, and symbolic codes" (p. 89). Neil Smelser's studies of revo- page. lutionary groups and patterns avoid "reductionistic or 6 Freud wrote that, if very young children witness simplistic causal statements" while fully acknowledging parental intercourse, "they inevitably regard the sexual the issues raised by competing methodological struc- act as a sort of ill-treatment or act of subjugation: they tures ("Social and Psychological Dimensions of Collec- view it, that is, in a sadistic sense." He first used the tive in Behavior," Essays Sociological Explanation [En- term "primal scene" in the Wolf-Man case (1918), af- N.J.: glewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1968], pp. 92-121, firming that the child equates intercourse with parental esp. p. 110). See also Smelser, Social Change in the aggression; the scene arouses the child's sexual excite- Industrial Revolution (London: Routledge and Kegan ment and leads to anxiety and guilt (The Standard Edi- Paul, 1959); John R. Gillis, Youth and History (New tion of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund York: Academic Press, 1974); and William J. Goode, Freud, 24 vols., trans. and ed. James Strachey et al. "The 'Fit' between Conjugal Family and the Modern [London: Hogarth, 1953-64], v, 585; vii, 196; xvin, 7- Industrial System," World Revolution and Family Pat- 122; abbreviated hereafter as SE). An excellent modern terns (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1963), pp. 10-26. discussion of the concept of the primal scene and its

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Albert D. Hutter 459 varied definitions is provided by Aaron H. Esman, "The 10 Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Con- Primal Scene: A Review and a Reconsideration,"Psy- duct (1859; rpt. London: John Murray, 1862), p. 7. choanalytic Study of the Child, 28 (1973), 49-81. 11 The mob is "a monster much dreaded" (I, xiv, 7 Norman N. Holland's recent work, particularly 149) in England as well as in France. But the English Poems in Persons (New York: Norton, 1973) and version is softened by narrative point of view and by 5 Readers Reading (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, relatively mild defining images. We observe the English 1975), demonstrates the personal base in all critical mob at the mock burial of Cly or the bloodthirsty acts and the need for a more sensitive appreciation of crowd at Darnay's London trial through the disarming reader response. Murray M. Schwartz argues convinc- comic vision of Jerry Cruncher. But our impression of ingly that any interpretationdescribes something neither the French crowd is either unmediated or mediated in entirely within us nor "out there" in the apparently a more frightening way, as when Lorry, appalled by objective text, but in an intermediate space, the "transi- the awful scenes at the grindstone and desperate to tional" space defined by the British psychoanalystD. W. prevent Lucie from witnessing them, intensifies the Winnicott ("Where Is Literature?"College English, 36 reader's own emotion (III, ii). The British crowd at [1975], 756-65). I am not persuaded, however, that Darnay's trial is "ogreish" (II, ii, 59), and on Darnay's each critic need describe in detail his psychological in- acquittal its members are "baffled blue-flies . . . dis- teraction with the text. In this essay, to locate the persing in search of other carrion" (II, iii, 73). How- reader's experience "elsewhere"(in the text itself) does ever ugly and disturbing, the metaphor suggests a not constitute a "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" diminutive and controlled menace, in contrast to the (Schwartz, p. 760). It is, rather, an attempt to gener- descriptions of the French mobs ("wolfish," "insati- alize not only from my personal reading of the novel able"). The French are more terrifying in their celebra- but from my understandingof a larger psychoanalytic tion of Darnay's initial release than are the English in and historical dynamic. I try to locate within the text hoping for a conviction; and when Darnay is finally a structure that seems to provoke a common response convicted in France, the crowd raises "a sound of crav- in many readers through different historical periods. ing and eagerness that had nothing articulate in it but 8 See particularly Ernst Kris, "The Recovery of blood" (III, x, 315). Childhood Memories in Psychoanalysis," Psychoana- 12 Weinstein and Platt argue that a critical change lytic Study of the Child, 11 (1956), 54-88; see also between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries turns on Joseph Sandler, "Trauma, Strain, and Development," a "capacity for emotional withdrawal" manifested Psychic Trauma, ed. Sidney S. Furst (New York: Basic through the world of business: "business generally be- Books, 1967), pp. 154-74. The Hampstead Research came the special province of men. . . . The relationship Group explains the term "retrospectivetrauma" in this of father to son . . . became more conscious; centered way: "By this we mean that the perception of some in the ego, it was therefore capable of a higher degree particular situation evokes the memory of an earlier of control. This control permitted critical examination experience, which under the present conditions becomes of the father's position, and on this basis the first steps traumatic. . . . The ego's sudden perception of . . . a were taken toward the inclusion of the sons in the link between present fantasy and the past memory may family structure" (Wish to Be Free, pp. 13-14). be a traumatic experience. Here the memory functions French society before the Revolution could not appro- as a present perception" (Sandler, p. 164). Freud uses priately resolve the inevitable tensions of generational the terms "retrospectivefantasies" (Zuriickphantasien) change: the choice was sharply drawn between passive and "deferredaction" (Nachtraglichkeit). For a full dis- acceptance of authority and active rebellion. (As we cussion of these terms and their history, see J. Lap- have seen, Darnay creates a false, third solution in lanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycho- attempting to flee his country and his fathers.) The Analysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: postrevolutionary world of business could, however, Norton, 1973). Kris argues that "the further course of resolve both national and family conflict within the life seems to determine which [early] experience may psyche of the individual. Dickens' contrasting images gain significance as a traumatic one" (p. 73). Furst of France and England, however crudely drawn, ac- stresses the importance of this concept because "in curately reflect, respectively, the historical and social some instances trauma can be diagnosed only in retro- conditions for revolution and stability suggested by spect" ("Psychic Trauma: A Survey," Psychic Trauma, Weinstein and Platt. See also "On Social Stability and p. 32). Social Change," in Psychoanalytic Sociology, pp. 91- 9 In an article on the "Medusa'sHead," Freud writes 122. that the horror of seeing a Gorgon's head is associated 13Dickens himself confirmed the connection between with the "horror" of sexual discovery (specifically a generational struggle and the Carton-Stryverepisode of child's first view of female genitalia); Freud's interpre- A Tale of Two Cities. Before 1856 Dickens had con- tations here are readily connected with the primal- ceived of a story to be "centered on 'Memory Carton,' scene experience. At times he seems almost to be de- jackal to a legal lion, the action to span 'Two Genera- scribing the particular horror experienced by young tions'" (Collins, "A Tale of Two Novels," p. 342). 14 Jerry Cruncher, as I show later. "The sight of Medusa's Hedva Ben-Israel, English Historians on the French head," writes Freud, "makes the spectator stiff with Revolution (Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. Press, 1968), terror, turns him to stone" (SE, xviim,273-74). p. 98; William Oddie, Dickens and Carlyle: The Ques-

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 460 Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities tion of Influence (London: Centenary, 1972), pp. 63-71; ing the limitations of plot but noting, as well, Dickens' Michael Goldberg, Carlyle and Dickens (Athens: Univ. success "in seeing the act of self-sacrifice from the in- of Georgia Press, 1972), p. 103. Most recently, Gordon side" (p. 248). Spence has argued that "Dickens appears to have been 19 Schizophrenia is itself derived from the Greek out of sympathy with the French people, except when term for a "splitting of the mind"; the term was first they were oppressed victims: he was not stirred by their introduced into psychiatry by Eugen Bleuler in 1911. revolt, but his imagination was stimulated by his loath- Freud was concerned primarily with the splitting of the ing when they committed atrocities" ("Dickens as a ego, and he applied "splitting"(Spaltung) in a far more Historical Novelist," Dickensian, 72 [1976], 21). Dick- specific way than Bleuler. See particularly "Fetishism" ens' sympathy, or lack of it, is best explained here (SE, xxi, 152-57); "An Outline of Psychoanalysis" on psychological rather than political grounds. When (SE, xxIIi, 144-207); "Splitting of the Ego in the the French people are oppressed, they merit Dickens' Process of Defense" (SE, xxii, 275-78). See also lavish sympathy for all the oppressed children of his Laplanche and Pontalis under "Schizophrenia" and novels. But when the French justifiably revolt, their "Splitting of the Ego." According to the theory of ob- aggression implies the ultimate atrocity-patricide- ject relations, splitting is an essential reaction of the and must be repudiated. infant to ambivalence and anxiety. The infant splits its The source material for A Tale of Two Cities reveals own emotions and projects them onto another person Dickens' unstated, and probably unconscious, conserva- (or "object") and then internalizes the now split object. tive view of the family. Both Oddie and Goldberg show These theories were developed from Freud primarily by Carlyle's influence on Dickens and the influence of a Melanie Klein; see particularly Contributions to Psycho- shared culture, and a common iconography, on both Analysis (London: Hogarth, 1948) and Developments men. Dickens had read one of Carlyle's sources, Mer- in Psycho-Analysis, ed. M. Klein et al. (London: Ho- cier's Tableau de Paris, which describes the sacrifice of garth, 1952). Robert J. Stoller's Splitting (New York: General Loiseroilles, who assumes his son's place at the Dell, 1973) relies on Freud's definition: Stoller describes guillotine and dies for him. If Dickens conceived Car- splitting as "a process in which the ego is altered as it ton's substitution for Darnay from this story, he has attempts to defend itself" (p. xvi). However, Stoller's transformed the disguised iconography of revolution subtle and comprehensive case history of a multiple- into a conservative parable. In Mercier's account, and personality patient also draws significantly on modern in Carlyle's repetition of it, the father is sacrificed so object-relationaltheory. that the son may live and grow; this supposedly real 20 The use of one aspect of splitting-the "double"- event lends itself to an imaginative splitting and identi- has been noted extensively in literary criticism, and it fication on the part of the audience, who can attribute is an important concept in the French school of psy- aggression to the "filial" revolutionarieswhile identify- choanalytic structuralism. Perhaps the best-known ing themselves with the guiltless son. In Dickens' novel example is Jacques Lacan's study of "The Purloined Carton assumes the position of the son-in relation to Letter," in which Dupin and the Ministre D. are de- Lorry, in identification with Christ-and dies for a scribed as mirror images (see "Seminar on 'The Pur- universal sin as well as for the particular sin that makes loined Letter,'" Yale French Studies, 48 [1972], 38-72). Darnay an Evremonde and a representative of the Robert Rogers' A Psychoanalytic Study of the Double ancien r6gime. In addition to Goldberg and Oddie, see in Literature (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1970) Collins, "A Tale of Two Novels," and J. A. Falconer, describes a variety of literary doubles, particularly in "The Sources of A Tale of Two Cities," Modern Lan- contemporary literature.Rogers, however, uses the term guage Notes, 36 (1921), 1-10. "splitting" either with specific reference to narcissism 15 Quoted in John Forster, The Life of Charles (pp. 18-30) or in a general sense as interchangeable Dickens (London: Chapman and Hall, 1872-74), III, with "doubling,""fragmentation," and "decomposition" 329. (p. 4). Leonard Manheim applies the term "multiple 16 "A Tale of Two Cities," Twentieth Century In- projection"to A Tale of Two Cities in "A Tale of Two terpretations of A Tale of Two Cities, ed. Charles E. Characters: A Study in Multiple Projection," Dickens Beckwith (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), Studies Annual, 1 (1970), 225-37. Manheim effectively p. 26. demonstrates the connection between what he calls the 17 "A Tale of Two Cities is admittedly one of the "novel's leading male character" (Carton-Darnay) and most strained of Dickens' works, and [Fitzjames] the Jekyll-Hyde feelings of the author, particularlyover Stephen has little trouble in exposing the mechanism of the affair with Ellen Ternan. His combination of psy- its grotesqueness which he does with sadistic relish" choanalysis and biography has different explanatory as- (George H. Ford, Dickens and His Readers [1955; rpt. sumptions and goals from my own, but his evidence New York: Norton, 1965], p. 104). and conclusions support the textual analyses of split 1 In Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels objects here. Harry Stone traces the relations between (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), J. Hillis psychological biography and one specific fictional pat- Miller sees another, larger meaning in the resurrection tern throughout Dickens' career in "The Love Pattern theme. He argues that it suggests a "direct contact with in Dickens' Novels," in Dickens the Craftsman: Strate- the transhuman."On this basis Miller is able to connect gies of Presentation, ed. Robert B. Partlow, Jr. (Car- the revolutionary and love stories of the novel, not- bondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 1-20.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Albert D. Hutter 461

Other critics have analyzed doubling and splitting on his most vivid incidents and images, including the ter- broader social and moral grounds. Joseph Gold, for rifying figure of Madame Defarge, who was based on example, writes that in A Tale of Two Cities "the the real-life Demoiselle Theroigne described by Car- desire to analyze and integrate the damned and the re- lyle. See Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, deemed in metaphor is the cause of the doubleness Vols. I-iv of the Centenary Ed. of The Works of which is at the centre of this novel." See Charles Thomas Carlyle, ed. H. D. Traill (London: Chapman Dickens: Radical Moralist (Minneapolis: Univ. of and Hall, 1896), esp. n, 254-55; iI, 288, 293; and Iv, Minnesota Press, 1972), p. 232. Georg Lukacs sees a 154. Carlyle characteristically combines sexual and profound split-a total dissociation, in fact-between violent images in some of his most intense portrayals the moral-political and the personal-psychological di- of revolutionary emotion: "Will Guards named Na- mensions of this novel. By using psychoanalyticconcepts tional thrust their bayonets into the bosoms of women? of splitting to discuss both personal and political aspects Such a thought, or rather such dim unshaped raw ma- of the Tale, I am offering an alternative to Lukacs's terial of a thought, ferments universally under the negative judgment; I am also attempting to explain female nightcap; and, by earliest daybreak, on slight more fully the successes and weaknesses-derived from hint, will explode" (ii, 250). See, generally, Bk. vii, a common source-that have prompted Lukacs to claim "The Insurrectionof Women," esp. HI,251-54, 278. that "Dickens . . . weakens the connection between the 26 Madame Defarge in "The Wine-Shop" (facing p. problems of the characters' lives and the events of the 160) resembles Lucie "After the Sentence" (facing French Revolution" (The Historical Novel, trans. Han- p. 318) and during "The Knock at the Door" (facing p. nah Mitchell and Stanley Mitchell from 2nd German 266); Lucie's expressions are naturally quite differ- ed. [Boston: Beacon, 1963], p. 243). ent, but the features of the two women are similar- 21 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, "A Tale of Two both women are young and attractive. What appear to Cities," rpt. in The Dickens Critics, ed. George H. Ford be mirror images of the two women are placed opposite and Lauriat Lane, Jr. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. each other on the wrapper of the original edition. Car- Press, 1961), p. 45; letter from Dickens to F. J. R6gnier lyle describes Demoiselle Theroigne as "brown-locked, (15 Oct. 1859), in The Letters of Charles Dickens, light-behaved, fire-hearted"and as a "Brown eloquent ed. Walter Dexter (Bloomsbury: Nonesuch, 1938), Ii, Beauty . . . with the figure of a Heathen Goddess" (in, 125-26. Dickens wrote to Regnier, however, on first 135, 264). completing the book, commenting, "I hope it is the Madame Defarge begins to age soon after Dickens' best story I have written." Philip Collins wonders death. The "Household Edition" (New York: Harper, whether Dickens meant to stress the word "story," be- 1878), for example, shows a square-jawed, muscular cause, notes Collins, it may have been "his best effort, Madame Defarge, looking very much like a man, on as a story, but no one then, and surely no one since, the title page. She looks older, heavier, and uglier by has regarded it as his best novel" ("A Tale of Two the end of the novel (p. 154), but is at her worst on Novels," p. 336). p. 79, where she bears a remarkable resemblance to 22 "Some Stylistic Devices in A Tale of Two Cities," the aging Queen Victoria. in Dickens the Craftsman, p. 185. 27 This last passage is noted by Michael Steig and 23 In spite of Fitzjames Stephen's obvious bias, he did F. A. C. Wilson ("Hortense vs. Bucket: The Ambiguity identify the novel's major problems. Shaw simply dis- of Order in Bleak House," Modern Language Quar- missed the book as "pure sentimental melodrama from terly, 33 [1972], 296), and they indicate that the image beginning to end" (Introd., Great Expectations [Edin- "points forward to Mme. Defarge." Hortense herself burgh: R. & R. Clark, 1937], p. vi), while Chesterton, appears to have been modeled on Maria Manning, a who liked the Tale, echoed a common complaint that murderer whose beauty and splendid mode of dress both Dickens and Carlyle represent the French Revo- brought thirty thousand people to her execution. See lution "as a mere elemental outbreak of hunger or ven- Philip Collins, Dickens and Crime, 2nd ed. (London: geance" (Charles Dickens [1906; rpt. New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 235-40. Schocken, 1965], p. 231). George Gissing was one of 28 On Copperfield see Leonard Manheim, "The Per- the first to call the book uncharacteristic in order to sonal History of David Copperfield,"American Imago, apologize for the sense of "restraintthroughout." Dick- 9 (1952), 21-43. ens "aimed . . . at writing a story for the story's sake. 29 For David's behavior see particularly Gwen- . . . Among other presumed superfluities, humour is dolyn B. Needham, "The Undisciplined Heart of David dismissed" (Charles Dickens [London: Blackie and Son, Copperfield," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 9 (1954), 1898], pp. 54-55). Gissing anticipated a now common 81-107. Some of Needham's conclusions are questioned failure to connect the larger thematic implications of the by William H. Marshall in "The Image of Steerforth story line to the psychological and political meanings and the Structure of David Copperfield," Tennessee of the text. Studies in Literature, 5 (1960), 57-65. 24 The classic description of this splitting of women 30 Julian Moynahan and Harry Stone were the first is in Freud's "On the Universal Tendency to Debase- critics to point out in detail the role of Orlick as heroic ment in the Sphere of Love," SE, xi, 179-90. alter ego. See Moynahan, "The Hero's Guilt: The Case 25As both Goldberg and Oddie demonstrate, Dick- of Great Expectations," Essays in Criticism, 10 (1960), ens drew on Carlyle's French Revolution for many of 60-79, and Stone, "Fire, Hand, and Gate: Dickens'

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:45:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 462 Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities Great Expectations,"Kenyon Review, 24 (1962), 662- its structure. One temporary resolution of generational 91. In my "Crime and Fantasy in Great Expecta- struggle in Great Expectations is achieved through the tions," Psychoanalysis and Literary Process, ed. Freder- comedy of Wemmick and his "Aged P.," which is in ick Crews (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop, 1970), pp. turn based on the psychological conflicts implicit in 25-65, I attempt to extend this view of the hero's the world of Victorian business. guilt while analyzing the father-son conflicts (and 31 Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (New resolutions) that characterize the novel and determine York: Simon, 1952), I, 979.

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