A Tale of Two Cities Essays: The French Revolution :: Tale Two Cities Essays

France and England in A tommyrot of twain Cities - The French Revolution   Introduction In the eighteen-fifties, Charles Dickens was pertain that social problems in England, particularly those relating to the condition of the poor, might provoke a mass reaction on the scale of the French Revolution. In a letter written in 1855, for example, he refers to the unrest of the time as follows I remember the discontent to be so much the worse for smouldering, instead of blazing openly, that it is extremely like the general mind of France forrader the breaking out of the first Revolution, and is in danger of being sour into such a devil of a conflagration as neer has been beheld since. (qtd. in I. Collins 42) At the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Dickens once again expresses his concern. The novel opens in 1775, with a similitude of England and pre-revolutionary France. While drawing parallels between the two countries, Dickens also alludes to his have got time "the period was so far like the present period, that some(a) of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the flush degree of comparison only" (1 bk. 1, ch. 1). The rest of the chapter shows that Dickens regarded the condition to be an evil one, since he depicts both countries as rife with poverty, injustice, and violence due to the irresponsibility of the ruling elite (1-3 bk. 1, ch. 1). As the novel unfolds, however, England becomes a safe harbor for those escaping the violence perpetrated by the French Revolution. In this paper, I shall argue that A Tale of Two Cities reflects the popular confidence in the stability of England in the eighteen-fifties, despite Dickenss suggestions at the beginning. A Tale of Two Cities thus becomes a novel about the England and the English of Dickenss time. And yet, many people today would believe that the novel is essentially about the French Revolution, which brings me to my second point. If in the 19th century the novel served to affirm the stability of Britain, in this century it has been greatly influential in the formation of the popular image of the French Revolution, in the first place thanks to film and television adaptations. The purpose of this paper is to look at the popular reception of the novel from the time of its first publication in 1859 to the nineteen-nineties.