I have been fascinated by reading several books written by Charles Dickens since I retired from my job and started studying and teaching literature classes nine years ago. During this period of about seven years, I have taught 5 novels by Dickens and a dozen more by other classic writers. In 2024, I led a book club meeting and a six-hour class on A Tale of Two Cities at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) at the University of Richmond (Virginia). As LLI is an organization established to enrich retired adults, the most common comment I receive from my students is, “I have read this book in high school or college.” I typically respond that I would like them to re-read the book during the class to have a greater understanding of the deeper themes and ideas. Although I have come across some very bright young school-aged students, teens, and young adults don’t generally have the maturity or life experiences to understand the issues and lessons presented in most classic complex novels, particularly ones written centuries ago. That is why I always prefer to present classic literature to people who have lived full lives and are more likely to consider some of the grand ideas of great authors than younger folks. By 1859, Dickens was 47 years old and had already lived a full life. He had published eleven very popular books before A Tale of Two Cities, including Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and David Copperfield ( a semi-biographical book, mostly paralleling his upbringing and coming-of-age). In the following year, the master released Great Expectations, which I consider his most brilliant novel. Thereafter, he published another excellent novel, Our Mutual Friend, in 1864, and by age 58, he died.
In our class, we considered the life Dickens needed to have before he could have had the experiences, skills, and maturity to write a novel that would stand out as one of the best ones in literature. Dickens grew up poor. Although his father had a decent job as a clerk in the English Navy Pay Office, he was frequently in serious debt from poor money management and careless life choices. Consequently, he was incarcerated in the Marshalsea debtor’s prisons from 1824-27. People who couldn’t pay even minor debts were routinely sent to prison in those days until someone could pay them off. However, family members were given easy access to visit their relatives or could live in the prisons with them and were expected to contribute significantly to their upkeep in prison. Much of Little Dorrit, the book he wrote before A Tale of Two Cities, was about such a family who lived in and around the Marshalsea prison, where their father was sentenced due to his accumulated debts. Dickens mother, without other sources of income, was forced to send young Charles to work in a boot blacking factory to help support the family. These experiences gave him valuable insights into the ways that the poor lived and were exploited by factory owners in England in the 19th Century. Despite this degrading work, the twelve-year old lad always had aspirations to be a gentleman. We can see how young Pip yearned to be gentleman in David Copperfield, a book novel that parallels Dickens upbringing and coming of age. Fortunately some relatives eventually rescued Dickens from these horrid factory experiences and helped send him to a preparatory school. By 1827, Dickens began to works in London both as a law clerk in Ellis and Blackmore. During his time, he taught himself shorthand and started working as journalist and court reporter. This type of work undoubtedly, exposed him to the relevant news of the day.
Most many of his previous novels focused on the the dismal living conditions of the poor, the incarcerated, and the working class ( the groups he had the most familiarity with). The idea of writing a historical novel about the French Revolution, which had transpired more than 60 years before he started writing A Tale of Two Cities, was inspired by his friend Thomas Carlisle, who wrote an authoritative historical book in 1837, called The French Revolution: A History. Carlyle wrote in a unique style for a historian, describing both the cruelty of the aristocrats, and the violent revengeful actions of the revolutionaries, as if he was directly experiencing them in 1789. By 1859, both the English and French recognized the abuses by both groups in power in the eighteenth century. Thus, it was a safe and interesting topic for Dickens to consider writing about in the form of a novel. In reading many parts of A Tale of Two Cities, we get the feeling that, like Carlyle, that Dickens was reporting about the French Revolution from am insiders view.
At the time Dickens was writing A Tale of Two Cities, he also had the notoriety of being an an actor in a play based on the book, The Frozen Deep by Willkie Collins. In this play, Dickens had a romantic relationship with an eighteen year actress, Ellen Ternan. He also arranged and funded an apartment love-nest for to live for their trysts. At the same time of this affair, Dickens was having serious marital discard with his wife, Catherine Hogarth, and publicly dumped her after than twenty years of marriage and ten children together. He wrote that Catherine was mentally unstable and a not fit as a mother or wife. His publishers pleaded with him to not write such trash in the tabloids, but he disregarded them. This negative publicity tarnished his image somewhat, but people still flocked to buy and read his books.
In the play, Dickens played the part of a man who sacrificed his life for the benefit his rival and their mutual love interest. The dramas of his life and the play got converted in his writing of A Tale of Two Cities to the love triangle among Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette, and Sydney Carton. More than one literary critic speculated that part of the emotional turmoil that Dickens was experiencing with his wife and his young love interest may have fueled the his power to be able to fully elaborate about the turbulence in both the English and French societies in the eighteenth century. It is difficult to consider how Dickens could have written as powerfully about such events without many of his most traumatic and dramatic life experiences. Consider his foreshadowing of the violent crowd converging on the Darnay, Carton, and Lucy right before the start of the French Revolution: “There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them—by the Lightning.” He added the last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window. I hear them!” he added again, after a thunder. “Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious!”
Admittedly, A Tale of Two Cities is a difficult novel to follow, even for mature readers without an experienced guide or by reading an interpretative book, like Dickens, A Life by Claire Tomalin. It is even more difficult to conceive of how the average teen or young adult could have a deep understanding of the complex emotional relationships and challenges that Dickens experienced as a tormented man, struggling to be be a great writer. Did he succeed in his balancing act? Sorry there will be no spoilers here. You will have to read or re-read this book when you are seasoned enough to best comprehend it. But I will try to write some future columns about A Tale of Two Cities and Dickens. Feel free to post any notes or questions in the dialogue box below , or write me at ellisonms2@alumni.vcu.edu
Sources Used: Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin, Viking Press, 2011
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