French Revolution

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A Tale of Two Cities 

by Charles Dickens

"In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is—as the light called human life is—at its coming and its going."  - Charles Dickens






In Charles Dicken's novel, A Tale of Two Cities, the beautiful Lucy Manette marries Charles Darnay, the descendant of an aristocratic French family denounced by the revolutionaries, among whom are the memorably evil fanatic Mme. Defarge. The narrative is leaner than the typical Dickens' novel, but that does not minimize the reader's delight. As you might expect, Lucy, as wife to Charles, is able to withstand the separation from him while he is imprisoned awaiting apparent doom buoyed by her love for him. 

In many respects Lucy remains a cypher, not unlike some of Dicken's other fictional women, perhaps in part because, unlike Esther Summerson in Bleak House, we never are allowed to share her thoughts. Fate and death intervene in the world created by Dickens with the express intent to mirror history. The novel succeeds in rendering the horrors of the French Revolution in brilliant fictional style.