A Tale of Two Cities

Dickens' famous opening sentence introduces the universal approach of the book, the French Revolution, and the drama depicted within:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.[7]

In 1775, a man flags down the nightly mail-coach on its route from London to Dover. The man is Jerry Cruncher, an employee of Tellson's Bank in London; he carries a message for Jarvis Lorry, a passenger and one of the bank's managers. Lorry sends Jerry back to deliver a cryptic response to the bank: "Recalled to Life." The message refers to Alexandre Manette, a French physician who has been released from the Bastille after an 18-year imprisonment. Once Lorry arrives in Dover, he meets Dr. Manette's daughter Lucie and her governess, Miss Pross. Lucie has believed her father to be dead, and faints at the news that he is alive; Lorry takes her to France to reunite with her father.

In the Paris neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Dr. Manette has been given lodgings by his former servant Ernest Defarge and his wife Therese, owners of a wine shop. Lorry and Lucie find him in a small garret, where he spends much of his time making shoes – a skill he learned in prison – which he uses to distract himself from his thoughts and which has become an obsession for him. He does not recognise Lucie at first but does eventually see the resemblance to her mother through her blue eyes and long golden hair, a strand of which he found on his sleeve when he was imprisoned. Lorry and Lucie take him back to England.

In 1780, French émigré Charles Darnay is on trial for treason against the British Crown. The key witnesses against him are two British spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, who claim that Darnay gave information about British troops in North America to the French. Under cross-examination by Mr. Stryver, the barrister defending Darnay, Barsad claims that he would recognise Darnay anywhere. Stryver points out his colleague, Sydney Carton, who bears a strong resemblance to Darnay, and Barsad admits that the two men look nearly identical. With Barsad's eyewitness testimony now discredited, Darnay is acquitted.

In Paris, the hated and abusive Marquis St. Evrémonde orders his carriage driven recklessly fast through the crowded streets, hitting and killing the child of Gaspard in Saint Antoine. The Marquis throws a coin to Gaspard to compensate him for his loss. Defarge, having observed the incident, comes forth to comfort the distraught father, saying the child would be worse off alive. This piece of wisdom pleases the Marquis, who throws a coin to Defarge also. As the Marquis departs, a coin is flung back into his carriage.

Arriving at his country château, the Marquis meets his nephew and heir, Darnay. Out of disgust with his aristocratic family, the nephew has shed his real surname (St. Evrémonde) and anglicised his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais, to Darnay.[8] The following passage records the Marquis' principles of aristocratic superiority:

"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky."[9]

That night, Gaspard, who followed the Marquis to his château by riding on the underside of the carriage, stabs and kills him in his sleep. Gaspard leaves a note on the knife saying, "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES."[10] After nearly a year on the run, he is caught and hanged above the village well.

In London, Darnay asks for Dr. Manette's permission to wed Lucie, but Carton confesses his love to Lucie as well. Knowing she will not love him in return, Carton promises to "embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you".[11] Stryver considers proposing marriage to Lucie, but Lorry talks him out of the idea.

On the morning of the marriage, Darnay reveals his real name and family lineage to Dr. Manette, a detail he had been asked to withhold until that day. In consequence, Dr. Manette reverts to his obsessive shoemaking after the couple leave for their honeymoon. He returns to sanity before their return, and the whole incident is kept secret from Lucie. Lorry and Miss Pross destroy the shoemaking bench and tools, which Dr. Manette had brought with him from Paris.

As time passes in England, Lucie and Charles begin to raise a family, a son (who dies in childhood) and a daughter, little Lucie. Lorry finds a second home and a sort of family with the Darnays. Stryver marries a rich widow with three children and becomes even more insufferable as his ambitions begin to be realised. Carton, even though he seldom visits, is accepted as a close friend of the family and becomes a special favourite of little Lucie.

In July 1789, the Defarges help to lead the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny. Defarge enters Dr. Manette's former cell, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower,"[12] and searches it thoroughly. Throughout the countryside, local officials and other representatives of the aristocracy are dragged from their homes to be killed, and the St. Evrémonde château is burned to the ground.

In 1792, Lorry decides to travel to Paris to collect important documents from the Tellson's branch in that city and place them in safekeeping against the chaos of the French Revolution. Darnay intercepts a letter written by Gabelle, one of his uncle's servants who has been imprisoned by the revolutionaries, pleading for the Marquis to help secure his release. Without telling his family or revealing his position as the new Marquis, Darnay sets out for Paris.

"The Sea Still Rises", an illustration for Book 2, Chapter 22 by "Phiz"

Shortly after Darnay arrives in Paris, he is denounced for being an emigrated aristocrat from France and jailed in La Force Prison.[13] Dr. Manette, Lucie, little Lucie, Jerry, and Miss Pross travel to Paris and meet Lorry to try to free Darnay. A year and three months pass, and Darnay is finally tried.

Dr Manette, viewed as a hero for his imprisonment in the Bastille, testifies on Darnay's behalf at his trial. Darnay is released, only to be arrested again later that day. A new trial begins the following day, under new charges brought by the Defarges and a third individual who is soon revealed as Dr Manette. He had written an account of his imprisonment at the hands of Darnay's father and hidden it in his cell; Defarge found it while searching the cell during the storming of the Bastille.

While running errands with Jerry, Miss Pross is amazed to see her long-lost brother Solomon, but he does not want to be recognised in public. Carton suddenly steps forward from the shadows and identifies Solomon as Barsad, one of the spies who tried to frame Darnay for treason at his trial in 1780. Jerry remembers that he has seen Solomon with Cly, the other key witness at the trial, and that Cly had faked his death to escape England. By threatening to denounce Solomon to the revolutionary tribunal as a Briton, Carton blackmails him into helping with a plan.

At the tribunal, Defarge identifies Darnay as the nephew of the dead Marquis St. Evrémonde and reads Dr Manette's letter. Defarge had learned Darnay's lineage from Solomon during the latter's visit to the wine shop several years earlier. The letter describes Dr Manette's imprisonment at the hands of Darnay's father and uncle for trying to report their crimes against a peasant family. Darnay's uncle had become infatuated with a girl, whom he had kidnapped and raped; despite Dr. Manette's attempt to save her, she died. The uncle killed her husband by working him to death, and her father died from a heart attack upon being informed of what had happened. Before he died defending the family honour, the brother of the raped peasant had hidden the last member of the family, his younger sister. The Evrémonde brothers imprisoned Dr. Manette after he refused their offer of a bribe to keep quiet. He concludes his letter by condemning the Evrémondes, "them and their descendants, to the last of their race."[14] Dr. Manette is horrified, but he is not allowed to retract his statement. Darnay is sent to the Conciergerie and sentenced to be guillotined the next day.

Carton wanders into the Defarges' wine shop, where he overhears Madame Defarge talking about her plans to have both Lucie and little Lucie condemned. Carton discovers that Madame Defarge was the surviving sister of the peasant family savaged by the Evrémondes.[15] At night, when Dr. Manette returns, shattered after spending the day in many failed attempts to save Darnay's life, he falls into an obsessive search for his shoemaking implements. Carton urges Lorry to flee Paris with Lucie, her father, and Little Lucie, asking them to leave as soon as he joins.

Shortly before the executions are to begin, Solomon sneaks Carton into the prison for a visit with Darnay. The two men trade clothes, and Carton drugs Darnay and has Solomon carry him out. Carton has decided to be executed in his place, taking advantage of their similar appearances, and has given his own identification papers to Lorry to present on Darnay's behalf. Following Carton's earlier instructions, the family and Lorry flee to England with Darnay, who gradually regains consciousness during the journey.

Meanwhile, Madame Defarge, armed with a dagger and pistol, goes to the Manette residence, hoping to apprehend Lucie and little Lucie and bring them in for execution. However, the family is already gone and Miss Pross stays behind to confront and delay Madame Defarge. As the two women struggle, Madame Defarge's pistol discharges, killing her and causing Miss Pross to go permanently deaf from noise and shock.

The seamstress and Carton, an illustration for Book 3, Chapter 15 by John McLenan (1859)

As Carton waits to board the tumbril that will take him to his execution, he is approached by another prisoner, a seamstress who had been incarcerated with Darnay. She mistakes Carton for him, but realises the truth upon seeing him at close range. Awed by his unselfish courage and sacrifice, she asks to stay close to him and he agrees. Upon their arrival at the guillotine, Carton comforts her, telling her that their ends will be quick and that the worries of their lives will not follow them into "the better land where ... [they] will be mercifully sheltered." He is guillotined immediately after the seamstress, a final prophetic thought running through his mind:[16]

I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance [a lieutenant of Madame Defarge], the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man [Lorry], so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul than I was in the souls of both.

I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Chapter 2

Illustration from a serialised edition of the story, showing three tricoteuses knitting, with the Vengeance standing in the centre.

• Jerry Cruncher: Porter and messenger for Tellson's Bank and secret "Resurrection Man" (body-snatcher); though rough and abusive towards his wife, he provides courageous service to the Manettes in Book the Third. His first name is short for Jeremiah; the latter name shares a meaning with the name of Jarvis Lorry.
• Jarvis Lorry: A manager at Tellson's Bank: "...a gentleman of 60 ... Very orderly and methodical he looked ... He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it..." He is a dear friend of Dr. Manette and serves as a sort of trustee and guardian of the Manette family. The bank places him in charge of the Paris branch during the Revolution, putting him in position to provide life-saving service to the Manettes in Book the Third. The end of the book reveals that he lives to be 88.

Chapter 4

• Lucie Manette: Daughter of Dr. Manette; an ideal pre-Victorian lady, perfect in every way. About 17 when the novel begins, she is described as short and slight with a "pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes..." Although Sydney Carton is in love with her, he declares himself an unsuitable candidate for her hand in marriage and instead she marries Charles Darnay, with whom she is very much in love, and bears him a daughter. However, Lucie genuinely cares about Carton's welfare and defends him when he is criticised by others. She is the "golden thread" after whom Book the Second is named, so called because she holds her father's and her family's lives together (and because of her blonde hair like her mother's). She also ties nearly every character in the book together.[17]

Chapter 5

• Monsieur Defarge: Given name Ernest, he is the owner of a Paris wine shop and leader of the Jacquerie. "A bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty ... He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them." He is devoted to Dr. Manette having been his servant as a youth. One of the key Revolutionary leaders, in which he is known as Jacques Four, he embraces the Revolution as a noble cause, unlike many other revolutionaries. Though he truly believes in the principles of the Revolution, Defarge is far more moderate than some of the other participants (notably his wife).
• Madame Defarge: Given name Thérèse; a vengeful female Revolutionary, she is arguably the novel's antagonist and is presented as a more extreme and bloodthirsty personality than her husband Ernest. "There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand; but, there was not one among them more to be dreaded than this ruthless woman ... Of a strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great determination, of that kind of beauty which not only seems to impart to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an instinctive recognition of those qualities." The source of her implacable hatred of the Evrémonde family is revealed late in the novel to be the rape of her sister and killing of her brother when she was a child.
• Jacques One, Two, and Three: Revolutionary compatriots of Ernest Defarge. Jacques Three is especially bloodthirsty and serves as a juryman on the Revolutionary Tribunals.

Chapter 6

• Dr. Alexandre Manette: Lucie's father; when the book opens, he has just been released after a ghastly 18 years as a prisoner in the Bastille. Weak, afraid of sudden noises, barely able to carry on a conversation, he is taken in by his faithful former servant Defarge who then turns him over to Jarvis Lorry and the daughter he has never met. He achieves recovery and contentment with her, her eventual husband Charles Darnay, and their little daughter. All his happiness is put at risk in Book the Third when Madame Defarge resolves to send Evrémonde/Darnay to the guillotine, regardless of his having renounced the Evrémondes' wealth and cruelty. At the same time, the reader learns the cause of Dr. Manette's imprisonment: he had rendered medical care to Madame Defarge's brother and sister following the injuries inflicted on them by the Evrémonde twins back in 1757; the Evrémondes decided he couldn't be allowed to expose them.

Chapter 1

• Mrs Cruncher: Wife of Jerry Cruncher. She is a very religious woman, but her husband, somewhat paranoid, claims she is praying (what he calls "flopping") against him, and that is why he does not often succeed at work. Jerry often verbally and, almost as often, physically abuses her, but at the end of the story, he appears to feel somewhat guilty about this.
• Young Jerry Cruncher: Son of Jerry and Mrs Cruncher. Young Jerry often follows his father around to his father's odd jobs, and at one point in the story, follows his father at night and discovers that his father is a Resurrection Man. Young Jerry looks up to his father as a role model and aspires to become a Resurrection Man himself when he grows up.

Chapter 2

• Charles Darnay: A Frenchman of the noble Evrémonde family; "...a young man of about five-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek and a dark eye." When introduced, he is on trial for his life at the Old Bailey on charges of spying on behalf of the French crown. In disgust at the cruelty of his family to the French peasantry, he took on the name "Darnay" (after his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais) and left France for England.[18] He and Lucie Manette fall deeply in love, they marry, and she gives birth to a daughter. He exhibits an admirable honesty in his decision to reveal to Dr Manette his true identity as a member of the infamous Evrémonde family. He puts his family's happiness at risk with his courageous decision to return to Paris to save the imprisoned Gabelle, who, unbeknownst to him, has been coerced into luring him there. Once in Paris, he is stunned to discover that, regardless of his rejection of his family's exploitative and abusive record, he is imprisoned incommunicado simply for being an aristocrat. Released after the testimony of Dr Manette, he is re-arrested and sentenced to be guillotined owing to Madame Defarge's undying hatred of all Evrémondes. This death sentence provides the pretext for the novel's climax.

Chapter 3

• John Barsad (real name Solomon Pross): An informer in London and later employed by the Marquis St. Evrémonde. When introduced at Charles Darnay's trial, he is giving damning evidence against the defendant but it becomes clear to the reader that he is an oily, untrustworthy character. Moving to Paris he takes service as a police spy in the Saint Antoine district, under the French monarchy. Following the Revolution, he becomes an agent for Revolutionary France (at which point he must hide his British identity). Although a man of low character, his position as a spy allows him to arrange for Sydney Carton's final heroic act (after Carton blackmails him with revealing his duplicity).
• Roger Cly: Barsad's collaborator in spying and giving questionable testimony. Following his chaotic funeral procession in Book the Second, Chapter 14, his coffin is dug up by Jerry Cruncher and his fellow Resurrection Men. In Book the Third, Jerry Cruncher reveals that in fact the casket contained only rocks and that Cly was clearly still alive and no doubt carrying on his spying activities.
• Mr Stryver: An ambitious barrister, senior partner to Sydney Carton.[19] "... a man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy..."; he wants to marry Lucie Manette because he believes that she is attractive enough. However, he is not truly in love with her and in fact treats her condescendingly. Jarvis Lorry suggests that marrying Lucie would be unwise and Stryver, after thinking it over, talks himself out of it, later marrying a rich widow instead.
• Sydney Carton: A quick-minded and highly intelligent but depressed English barrister, referred to by Dickens as "The Jackal" because of his deference to Stryver. When introduced, he is a hard-drinking cynic, having watched Stryver advance while never taking advantage of his own considerable gifts: Dickens writes that the sun rose "upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible to the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away." In love with Lucie Manette, she cares about him but more as a concerned mother figure than a potential mate. He ultimately becomes a selfless hero, redeeming everything by sacrificing his life for a worthy cause.

Chapter 6

• Miss Pross: Lucie Manette's governess since Lucie was 10 years old: "... one of those unselfish creatures—found only among women—who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had..." She is fiercely loyal to Lucie and to England. She believes her long-lost brother Solomon, now the spy and perjurer John Barsad, is "the one man worthy of Ladybird," ignoring the fact that he "was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore..." She is not afraid to physically fight those she believes are endangering the people she loves. She permanently loses her hearing when the fatal pistol shot goes off during her climactic fight with Madame Defarge.

Chapter 7

• "Monseigneur": An unnamed generic aristocrat whose extraordinary decadence and self-absorption, described in detail, are used by Dickens to characterise the ancien régime in general. "The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur." His fellow nobles also luxuriate in vast wealth, but this does not inoculate them from feeling envy and resentment: as the Marquis St. Evrémonde leaves Monseigneur's house "with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand", he turns to the latter's bedroom and quietly says, "I devote you ... to the Devil!" When the Revolution begins, Monseigneur puts on his cook's clothing and ignominiously flees, escaping with only his life.
• Marquis St. Evrémonde:[20] Uncle of Charles Darnay: "...a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask." Determined to preserve the traditional prerogatives of the nobility until the end of his life, he is the twin brother of Charles Darnay's late father; both men were exceptionally arrogant and cruel to peasants. Lamenting reforms which have imposed some restraints on the abusive powers of his class, the Marquis is out of favour at the royal court at the time of his assassination. Murdered in his bed by the peasant Gaspard.
• Gaspard: A peasant whose child is run over and killed by the Marquis St. Evrémonde's carriage. He plunges a knife into Evrémonde's heart, pinning a note that reads, "Drive him fast to his tomb," a reference to the careless speed that caused his little child's death. After being in hiding for a year, he is found, arrested, and executed.
• The Mender of Roads: A peasant who later works as a woodsawyer; the Defarges bring him into a conspiracy against the aristocracy, where he is referred to as Jacques Five.

Chapter 8

• Théophile Gabelle: Gabelle is "the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary, united"[21] for the tenants of the Marquis St. Evrémonde. Gabelle is imprisoned by the revolutionaries, and his beseeching letter brings Darnay to France. Gabelle is "named after the hated salt tax".[22]

Chapter 3

• The Vengeance: A companion of Madame Defarge referred to as her "shadow" and lieutenant, a member of the sisterhood of women revolutionaries in Saint Antoine, and Revolutionary zealot. (Many Frenchmen and women did change their names to show their enthusiasm for the Revolution.[23]) Carton predicts that the Vengeance, Defarge, Cly, and Barsad will be consumed by the Revolution and end up on the guillotine.

Chapter 13

• The Seamstress: "...a young woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was no vestige of colour, and large widely opened patient eyes..." Having been caught up in The Terror, she strikes up a conversation with the man she assumes is Evrémonde in the large room where the next day's guillotine victims are gathered. When she realises that another man has taken Charles Darnay's place, she admires his sacrifice and asks if she can hold his hand during their tumbril ride to the place of execution.

In Dickens' England, resurrection always sat firmly in a Christian context. Most broadly, Sydney Carton is resurrected in spirit at the novel's close (even as he, paradoxically, gives up his physical life to save Darnay's). More concretely, "Book the First" deals with the rebirth of Dr. Manette from the living death of his incarceration.

Resurrection appears for the first time when Mr. Lorry replies to the message carried by Jerry Cruncher with the words "Recalled to Life". Resurrection also appears during Mr. Lorry's coach ride to Dover, as he constantly ponders a hypothetical conversation with Dr. Manette: ("Buried how long?" "Almost eighteen years." ... "You know that you are recalled to life?" "They tell me so.") He believes he is helping with Dr. Manette's revival and imagines himself "digging" up Dr. Manette from his grave.

Resurrection is a major theme in the novel. In Jarvis Lorry's thoughts of Dr. Manette, resurrection is first spotted as a theme. It is also the last theme: Carton's sacrifice. Dickens originally wanted to call the entire novel Recalled to Life. (This instead became the title of the first of the novel's three "books".) Jerry is also part of the recurring theme: he himself is involved in death and resurrection in ways the reader does not yet know. The first piece of foreshadowing comes in his remark to himself: "You'd be in a blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!" The black humour of this statement becomes obvious only much later on. Five years later, one cloudy and very dark night (in June 1780[33]), Mr. Lorry reawakens the reader's interest in the mystery by telling Jerry it is "Almost a night ... to bring the dead out of their graves". Jerry responds firmly that he has never seen the night do that.[34]

It turns out that Jerry Cruncher's involvement with the theme of resurrection is that he is what the Victorians called a "Resurrection Man", one who (illegally) digs up dead bodies to sell to medical men (there was no legal way to procure cadavers for study at that time).

The opposite of resurrection is of course death. Death and resurrection appear often in the novel. Dickens is angered that in France and England, courts hand out death sentences for insignificant crimes. In France, peasants had formerly been put to death without any trial, at the whim of a noble.[35] The Marquis tells Darnay with pleasure that "[I]n the next room (my bedroom), one fellow ... was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter—his daughter!"[36]

The demolition of Dr. Manette's shoe-making workbench by Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry is described as "the burning of the body".[37] It seems clear that this is a rare case where death or destruction (the opposite of resurrection) has a positive connotation since the "burning" helps liberate the doctor from the memory of his long imprisonment. But Dickens' description of this kind and healing act is strikingly odd:

"The Accomplices", an illustration for Book 2, Chapter 19 by "Phiz"

So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.[38]

Sydney Carton's martyrdom atones for all his past wrongdoings. He even finds God during the last few days of his life, repeating Christ's soothing words, "I am the resurrection and the life".[39] Resurrection is the dominant theme of the last part of the novel. Darnay is rescued at the last moment and recalled to life; Carton chooses death and resurrection to a life better than that which he has ever known: "it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there ... he looked sublime and prophetic".

In the broadest sense, at the end of the novel, Dickens foresees a resurrected social order in France, rising from the ashes of the old one.[16]

Hans Biedermann writes that water "is the fundamental symbol of all the energy of the unconscious—an energy that can be dangerous when it overflows its proper limits (a frequent dream sequence)."[40] This symbolism suits Dickens' novel; in A Tale of Two Cities, the frequent images of water stand for the building anger of the peasant mob, an anger that Dickens sympathizes with to a point, but ultimately finds irrational and even animalistic.

Early in the book, Dickens suggests this when he writes, "[T]he sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction."[41] The sea here represents the coming mob of revolutionaries. After Gaspard murders the Marquis, he is "hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging, poisoning the water."[42] The poisoning of the well represents the bitter impact of Gaspard's execution on the collective feeling of the peasants.

After Gaspard's death, the storming of the Bastille is led (from the St. Antoine neighbourhood, at least) by the Defarges; "As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled around Defarge's wine shop, and every human drop in the cauldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex..."[43] The crowd is envisioned as a sea. "With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into a detested word [the word Bastille], the living sea rose, wave upon wave, depth upon depth, and overflowed the city..."[43]

Darnay's jailer is described as "unwholesomely bloated in both face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water." Later, during the Reign of Terror, the revolution had grown "so much more wicked and distracted ... that the rivers of the South were encumbered with bodies of the violently drowned by night..." Later a crowd is "swelling and overflowing out into the adjacent streets ... the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled them away."

During the fight with Miss Pross, Madame Defarge clings to her with "more than the hold of a drowning woman". Commentators on the novel have noted the irony that Madame Defarge is killed by her own gun, and perhaps Dickens means by the above quote to suggest that such vicious vengefulness as Madame Defarge's will eventually destroy even its perpetrators.

So many read the novel in a Freudian light, as exalting the (British) superego over the (French) id. Yet in Carton's last walk, he watches an eddy that "turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it onto the sea"—his fulfilment, while masochistic and superego-driven, is nonetheless an ecstatic union with the subconscious.

As is frequent in European literature, good and evil are symbolized by light and darkness. Lucie Manette is the light, as represented literally by her name; and Madame Defarge is darkness. Darkness represents uncertainty, fear, and peril. It is dark when Mr. Lorry rides to Dover; it is dark in the prisons; dark shadows follow Madame Defarge; dark, gloomy doldrums disturb Dr. Manette; his capture and captivity are shrouded in darkness; the Marquis' estate is burned in the dark of night; Jerry Cruncher raids graves in the darkness; Charles' second arrest also occurs at night. Both Lucie and Mr. Lorry feel the dark threat that is Madame Defarge. "That dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me," remarks Lucie. Although Mr. Lorry tries to comfort her, "the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself". Madame Defarge is "like a shadow over the white road", the snow symbolising purity and Madame Defarge's darkness corruption. Dickens also compares the dark colour of blood to the pure white snow: the blood takes on the shade of the crimes of its shedders.

Charles Dickens was a champion of the poor in his life and in his writings. His childhood included some of the pains of poverty in England, as he had to work in a factory as a child to help his family. His father, John Dickens, continually lived beyond his means and eventually went to debtors' prison. Charles was forced to leave school and began working ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, earning six shillings a week.

Dickens considered the workings of a mob, in this novel and in Barnaby Rudge, creating believable characters who act differently when the mob mentality takes over. The reasons for revolution by the lower classes are clear, and given in the novel. Some of his characters, notably Madame Defarge, have no limit to their vengeance for crimes against them. The Reign of Terror was a horrific time in France, and she gives some notion for how things went too far from the perspective of the citizens, as opposed to the actions of the de facto government in that year. Dickens does not spare his descriptions of mob actions, including the night Dr Manette and his family arrive at Tellson's bank in Paris to meet Mr Lorry, saying that the people in the vicious crowd display "eyes which any unbrutalized beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun".[44]

The reader is shown that the poor are brutalised in France and England alike. As crime proliferates, the executioner in England is

stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now hanging housebreaker ... now burning people in the hand" or hanging a broke man for stealing sixpence. In France, a boy is sentenced to have his hands removed and be burned alive, only because he did not kneel down in the rain before a parade of monks passing some fifty yards away. At the lavish residence of Monseigneur, we find "brazen ecclesiastics of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives ... Military officers destitute of military knowledge ... [and] Doctors who made great fortunes ... for imaginary disorders".[45]

This incident is fictional, but is based on a true story related by Voltaire in a famous pamphlet, An Account of the Death of the Chevalier de la Barre.[46]

So riled is Dickens at the brutality of English law that he depicts some of its punishments with sarcasm: "the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action". He faults the law for not seeking reform: "Whatever is, is right" is the dictum of the Old Bailey.[47]

Dickens wants his readers to be careful that the same revolution that so damaged France will not happen in Britain, which (at least at the beginning of the book) is shown to be nearly as unjust as France; Ruth Glancy has argued that Dickens portrays France and England as nearly equivalent at the beginning of the novel, but that as the novel progresses, England comes to look better and better, climaxing in Miss Pross' pro-Britain speech at the end of the novel.[48] But his warning is addressed not to the British lower classes, but to the aristocracy. He repeatedly uses the metaphor of sowing and reaping; if the aristocracy continues to plant the seeds of a revolution through behaving unjustly, they can be certain of harvesting that revolution in time. The lower classes do not have any agency in this metaphor: they simply react to the behaviour of the aristocracy. In this sense it can be said that while Dickens sympathizes with the poor, he identifies with the rich: they are the book's audience, its "us" and not its "them". "Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind".[49]

With the people starving and begging the Marquis for food, his uncharitable response is to let the people eat grass; the people are left with nothing but onions to eat and are forced to starve while the nobles are living lavishly upon the people's backs. Every time the nobles refer to the life of the peasants it is only to destroy or humiliate the poor.

Some have argued that in A Tale of Two Cities Dickens reflects on his recently begun affair with eighteen-year-old actress Ellen Ternan, which was possibly platonic but certainly romantic. Lucie Manette has been noted as resembling Ternan physically.[50]

After starring in a play by Wilkie Collins titled The Frozen Deep, Dickens was first inspired to write Tale. In the play, Dickens played the part of a man who sacrifices his own life so that his rival may have the woman they both love; the love triangle in the play became the basis for the relationships among Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette, and Sydney Carton in Tale.[51]

Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay may bear importantly on Dickens' personal life. The plot hinges on the near-perfect resemblance between Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay; the two look so alike that Carton twice saves Darnay through the inability of others to tell them apart. Carton is Darnay made bad. Carton suggests as much:

'Do you particularly like the man [Darnay]?' he muttered, at his own image [which he is regarding in a mirror]; 'why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for talking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes [belonging to Lucie Manette] as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.'[52]

Many have felt that Carton and Darnay are doppelgängers, which Eric Rabkin defines as a pair "of characters that together, represent one psychological persona in the narrative".[53] If so, they would prefigure such works as Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Darnay is worthy and respectable but dull (at least to most modern readers), Carton disreputable but magnetic.

One can only suspect whose psychological persona it is that Carton and Darnay together embody (if they do), but it is often thought to be the psyche of Dickens. He might have been quite aware that between them, Carton and Darnay shared his own initials, a frequent property of his characters.[54] However, he denied it when asked.

Dickens dedicated the book to the Whig and Liberal prime minister Lord John Russell: "In remembrance of many public services and private kindnesses."[55]

The reports published in the press are very divergent. Thomas Carlyle is enthusiastic, which makes the author "heartily delighted".[59] On the other hand, Mrs. Oliphant finds "little of Dickens" in the novel.[60] Critic James Fitzjames Stephen sparked off a scandal by calling it a "dish of puppy pie and stewed cat which is not disguised by the cooking" and "a disjointed framework for the display of the tawdry wares, which are Mr Dickens's stock-in-trade.[61]

• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1911 silent film.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1917 silent film.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1922 silent film.
• The Only Way, a 1927 silent British film directed by Herbert Wilcox.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1935 black-and-white film starring Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, and Edna May Oliver, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1958 version, starring Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Christopher Lee, Leo McKern, and Donald Pleasence.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1980 version, starring Chris Sarandon and Alice Krige.

• On 25 July 1938, The Mercury Theatre on the Air produced a radio adaptation starring Orson Welles. Welles also starred in a version broadcast on Lux Radio Theater on 26 March 1945.
• Ronald Colman recreated his 1935 film role three times on radio: twice on the Lux Radio Theatre, first on 12 January 1942 with Edna Best and again on 18 March 1946 with Heather Angel, and once on the 9 March 1948 broadcast of Favorite Story (director Cecil B. DeMille's "favorite story").
• On 7 October 1943, a portion of the novel was adapted to the syndicated programme The Weird Circle as "Dr. Manette's Manuscript."
• In 1950, the BBC broadcast a radio adaptation by Terence Rattigan and John Gielgud of their unproduced 1935 stage play.
• A half-hour version titled "Sydney Carton" was broadcast on 27 March 1954 on Theatre Royal hosted by and starring Laurence Olivier.
• In June 1989, BBC Radio 4 produced a seven-hour drama adapted for radio by Nick McCarty and directed by Ian Cotterell. This adaptation has been occasionally repeated by BBC Radio 7 and later BBC Radio 4 Extra (most recently in 2009). The cast included Charles Dance as Sydney Carton, Maurice Denham as Dr. Manette, Richard Pasco as Mr. Lorry, John Moffatt as Marquis St. Evrémonde, Charlotte Attenborough as Lucie Manette, John Duttine as Darnay, Aubrey Woods as Mr. Stryver and Barbara Leigh-Hunt as Miss Pross.
• In December 2011, as part of its special season on Charles Dickens' Bicentenerary,[62] BBC Radio 4 produced a new five-part adaptation for radio by Mike Walker with original music by Lennert Busch and directed by Jessica Dromgoole and Jeremy Mortimer[63] which won the 2012 Bronze Sony Radio Academy Award for Best Drama.[64] The cast included Robert Lindsay as the voice of Charles Dickens, Paul Ready as Sydney Carton, Karl Johnson as Dr. Manette, Lydia Wilson as Lucie Manette, Jonathan Coy as Mr. Lorry, Andrew Scott as Darnay, Alison Steadman as Miss Pross and Clive Merrison as Marquis St. Evrémonde.
• In 2018, A Tale of Two Cities: Aleppo and London, a three-part adaptation of the Dickens novel written by Ayeesha Menon and directed by Polly Thomas was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, updating the story and characters to set it in modern-day London and war-torn Syria.[65] The cast included Shaun Parker as Sid (Sydney Carton), Lara Sawalha as Lina (Lucie Manette), Fatima Adoum as Taghreed (Madame Defarge), Phil Davis as Jarvis (Mr. Lorry), Khalid Abdalla as Shwan Dahkurdi (Charles Darnay) and Nadim Sawalha as Dr. Mahmoud (Dr. Manette).

• ABC produced a two-part mini-series in 1953.[66]
• The BBC produced an eight-part mini-series in 1957 starring Peter Wyngarde as Sydney Carton, Edward de Souza as Charles Darnay, and Wendy Hutchinson as Lucie Manette.
• The BBC produced a ten-part mini-series in 1965.
• The BBC produced another eight-part mini-series in 1980 starring Paul Shelley as Carton/Darnay, Sally Osborne as Lucie Manette, and Nigel Stock as Jarvis Lorry.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a 1984 TV animated version by Burbank Animation Studios.[67]
• ITV Granada produced a two-part mini-series in 1989 starting James Wilby as Sydney Carton, Xavier Deluc as Charles Darnay, and Serena Gordon as Lucie Manette. The production also aired on Masterpiece Theatre on PBS in the United States.[68][69]

• Royal & Derngate Theatre produced an adaptation by Mike Poulton with original music by Rachel Portman, directed by James Dacre.
• The Regent's Park Open Air Theatre staged an adaptation by Matthew Dunster in 2017, directed by artistic director Timothy Sheader.

Stage musical adaptations of the novel include:

• Two Cities, the Spectacular New Musical (1968), with music by Jeff Wayne, lyrics by Jerry Wayne and starring Edward Woodward.[70]
• A Tale of Two Cities (1998), with music by David Pomeranz and book by Steven David Horwich and David Soames. The musical was commissioned by Paul Nicholas and co-produced by Bill Kenwright ran at the New Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham during their 1998 Christmas season with Paul Nicholas as Sydney Carton.
• Two Cities (2006), a musical by Howard Goodall, which was set during the Russian Revolution, with the two cities being London and St. Petersburg.
• A Tale of Two Cities, a musical by Jill Santoriello, which opened on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on 18 September 2008. The production starred James Barbour as Sydney Carton, Natalie Toro as Madame Defarge and Brandi Burkhardt as Lucie Manette. The show was directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle. Since Broadway, the show has been performed in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Korea.[71]

• Arthur Benjamin's operatic version of the novel, subtitled Romantic Melodrama in Six Scenes, premiered on 17 April 1953, conducted by the composer. It received its stage premiere at Sadler's Wells on 22 July 1957, under the baton of Leon Lovett.[72]

• Dav Pilkey wrote a comic titled Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties, loosely based on the novel.