A Tale of Two Cities
Afterword by Stepehn Koch
A few key points for discussion
Koch writes that the primal crime
committed in the novel is rape:
Pg. 383: “…may be a novel about revolution. But it is also a
novel about rape.”
Pg 384: “It is surprising how many readers almost miss the
crime…”
“…Yet for many, it slips right by.”
Doctor Manette's being "buried alive" in the Bastille is a literal
concealment of the rape, which the narrative mimics not only
by not referring to it until nearly the end but also by cloaking it
in the symbolic phrase "the substance of the shadow.“
"Dickens himself drapes the crime in yards of symbolism and
Gothic obscurity," the crime that "initiates the novel's entire
cycle of violence and guilt.”
Revolutionary terror and “La Guillotine”
are both portrayed as feminine:
Pg 391: “La Guillotine. Note how often Dickens insits
that the instrument of vengeance is feminine.”
Pg. 391: “Both Madame DeFarge and her sidekick, The
Vengeance, are more implacable than their
husbands.” Both are women.
Pg 392: Dickens’ daughters conceded that their father
“did not understand women.”
Lucie Manette: Dickens’ model
of the perfect woman?
The Vengeance and Madame DeFarge are perfectly
evil women… Lucie is perfectly good.
Pg 392: Lucie “is a flawless paragon of sweetness and
love”
Pg 392: What makes her this way? The “happiness or
sadness of others, above all of her husband and
father.”
This feels very outdated today.
Pg 392: Lucie is “unbelievable and unbearable.”
Sydney and Charles:
Two halves of one man?
Read on page 393
What has Sydney actually done wrong?
Pg 386: “He is in fact among the best bad men in all
literature.”
Pg. 386: “We are told…repeatedly… that Sydney is
bad… Sydney constantly calls himself bad.”
His crime seems to be his own despair.
Sydney gives up.
His sacrifice at the guillotine trades his life for the
(more valuable?) lives of Charles and Lucie.
Dickens does not support the
revolution OR the previous ruling class
Find examples that show Dickens supports neither.