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A Tale of Two Cities Dickens and the Fiery Past: "A Tale of Two Cities" Reconsidered Author(s): G. Robert Stange Source: The English Journal, Vol. 46, No. 7 (Oct., 1957), pp. 381-390 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/808362 Accessed: 02-05-2016 21:02 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The English Journal This content downloaded from 134.129.182.74 on Mon, 02 May 2016 21:02:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Dickens and the Fiery Past: A Tale of Two Cities Reconsidered G. Robert Stange During this school year, as for decades past, thousands of high school students will study A Tale of Two Cities. Is the novel a good choice for the high school program? This appraisal will help in answering the question. The author is an associate professor of English at the University of Minnesota. BUT WHY waste time on Dickens errors that Dickens continually falls when one can read Henry James?" into; he could never have cried over The sophisticated graduate student his characters so unabashedly, nor who asked the question did not laughed so uproariously. When we really want an answer; he wanted read the great fictional craftsmen we to provoke critical discussion. The are impressed by the justness with obvious reply is that life, thank God, which they have rendered a character is long enough to include both these or an aspect of life; we approve them novelists, but the question's chief use by considering that they have been is to define two permanent poles of faithful to our experience of the world. literary art. James, in his search for a But the characters of Dickens' novels flawless technique, sustained control, have an independent existence; his and delicate effect, is worlds apart world operates by its own laws, and from the sprawling, uneven, essentially after being immersed in it we return imperfect Dickens. In this respect, at to our world with heightened percep- least, Dickens is like the "imperfect" tions and a finer sense of reality. In Shakespeare; by dint of his extraordi- reading Dickens one tends to compare nary creative energy, the very scope the characters of real life with those in of his art, he enters the rare category his novels: no one ever praised Grand- of writers who have ceased to be de- father Smallweed or Mr. Micawber or tached objects of contemplation, and Mrs. Gamp for being faithfully ren- become instead parts of everyone's dered; we find instead human beings past. who resemble them. Seen under the aspect of eternity There are many reasons why Dick- Dickens may not be a greater novelist ens' novels are the best kind of thing than James, but he can speak more for young people to read. On the most easily than James could to many more general level, his great creative energy, people. James could not have afforded the easy extensiveness of his work, help to be vulgar as Dickens was; he could suggest to the young the joyful possi- not have allowed himself the artistic bilities of all art. His sensitivity to the 381 This content downloaded from 134.129.182.74 on Mon, 02 May 2016 21:02:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 382 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL beauty and interest of the humblest scientious teachers must have regarded aspects of life, his vibrant sympathy, the historical background of the novel are fine examples of responses that as a kind of unearned dividend that must inform any permanently signifi- could be drawn on at need. If one cant literature. A novel by Dickens could get a little history in by the back should be in every high school curricu- door, so much the better. lum. But I have sometimes wondered Some of these reasons have lost their why that novel has almost invariably force over the last thirty or forty been A Tale of Two Cities. Reflection years. There may be some point in suggests an initial advantage in its reconsidering the exclusive assignment being the shortest-next to Hard Times of this novel (if I were choosing for a -of Dickens' fourteen novels. How- high school course I should pick Great ever, I think there are other more Expectations or David Copperfield), worthy reasons, and some of them are but I do not think we need regard A good. Tale of Two Cities as a really bad This particular novel was most choice. It may be-along with Hard widely accepted as a high school as- Times-the least Dickensian of the signment about half a century ago. At novels, but no novel of Dickens is that time, we must assume, it reflected uninteresting; none can fail to enchant contemporary literary enthusiasms. In or to instruct us. The very weaknesses the 1890's Freeman Wills' play, The of Dickens are illuminating, and if in Only Way, an adaptation of Dickens' this novel he has, as I believe, failed to novel, was an enormous success. I sus- achieve his ambitious plans, the novel pect that, for this reason, our peda- nevertheless has qualities which make gogical forbears found A Tale the it uniquely valuable. most immediately relevant, the most "modern" of all Dickens' novels. In considering the general scheme of The fact that this novel is unlike A Tale of Two Cities we can discern three main points of departure from most of Dickens' work may also have recommended it to teachers. There are which the conception obviously de- velops. Dickens tells us in his preface more big scenes in it than in any of his that the main idea of the story came other novels; there is less of the gro- to him while he was performing in an tesque, fewer episodes and characters amateur production of Wilkie Collins' that the inexperienced reader might play, The Frozen Deep. This melo- consider quaint or antiquated; and drama, which was much admired by there is, almost uniquely in Dickens, a Dickens and his friends, is about two single plot that is unravelled with men, Antarctic explorers, who are in speed and concision, and which always love with the same girl. One of the dominates both the characters and heroes (played by Dickens) sacrifices their milieux. The novel's relatively his life to save his rival's, and by this simple construction makes it easy for sacrifice is morally regenerated. Dick- the reader to get into and through the ens' comment on the play helps em- story; it invites an immediate and phasize the fact that in the novel Syd- simple response. In addition to these ney Carton's sacrificial death, and not inconsiderable advantages con- more important, the whole theme of This content downloaded from 134.129.182.74 on Mon, 02 May 2016 21:02:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DICKENS AND THE FIERY PAST 383 violent death and regeneration, must dispose his private dramas. He was de- be regarded as the "main idea." voted to Carlyle's history, "the book Though A Tale ends with Carton's of all others," according to his Ameri- execution, its beginning and middle are can friend, J. T. Fields, "which he dominated by the sufferings of Doctor read perpetually and of which he Manette, the Bastille prisoner. Dickens never tired-a book for inexhaustible- had considered calling the novel ness to be placed before every other "Buried Alive," or "The Doctor of book." In 1850 Dickens wrote to his Beauvais," and the theme of imprison- friend and biographer, John Forster, ment runs darkly through it, second in that he was reading The French Revo- importance only to the theme of re- lution "again, for the 500th time," and birth. During the years to which A he concluded the preface to his novel Tale of Two Cities belongs Dickens with the statement that "no one can seems to have been obsessed by the hope to add anything to the philos- notion of a prisoner buried alive, sud- ophy of Mr. Carlyle's wonderful denly released to the light of everyday book." life, and having to re-form his connec- Many of the details of Dickens' tions with free men, to learn again the novel are drawn directly from Carlyle. meaning of love and responsibility. Certain great scenes, such as the storm- Both Little Dorrit, which preceded A ing of the Bastille or the operation of Tale, and Great Expectations, which the guillotine, are as firmly based on followed it, develop the prison theme; Carlyle's history as are such smaller one works out the comic and tragic details as the firing of the chateaux or, conditions of prison life itself, the even, the four valets who help Mon- other treats with pathos and searing seigneur to dress. But in emphasizing irony the ideas of innocence and guilt these specific obligations one may in terms of the bond between the con- overlook the more fundamental debt. vict and the "free" and "guiltless" men Dickens' choice of the historical event who judge and sentence him.
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