A TALE OF TWO CITIES 📚: with Céline Prest

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Dr. Céline Prest who guides today's discussion on A Tale of Two Cities  - one of the most gripping, exciting and heart-rending stories that Dickens ever wrote. 

Céline completed her Phd at the Sorbonne University in 2016. Her doctoral research was awarded the André Topia Prize by the Chancellerie des Universitiés de Paris, and the Robert B. Partlow Jr prize by the Dickens Society. In 2019 she published a new edition of The Pickwick Papers for Gallimard. And in 2023 she published a monograph Le Spectre du document dans l’œuvre romanesque de Charles Dickens ...

Original Photo of Céline Prest © Chancellerie des Universités de Paris - Sylvain Lhermie / Original Photo of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd / Original Dickens illustrations sourced from Michael John Goodman's incredible Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery

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SPEAKER_02 0:16

Hi everyone, welcome back. It's a thrill to kick off a new series of Charles Dickens' A Brain on Fire with A Tale of Two Cities, one of the most gripping, exciting, and heartrending stories that Dickens ever wrote. It overwhelmed the author himself, taking complete possession over him as he sat down to write. He also believed it to be the best story he had ever written. To me, this novel has a filmic quality with its rapid switches of perspective. One moment, you, the reader, are stumbling on uneven cobbles, unable to see above the heads of the crowds that swarm in around you. Then, in a flash, you are now passing over the swinging street lamps and out towards the great grove of stars that look down on us all. Close your eyes and find yourself nodding, half awake in a carriage, contemplating how every human creature is a profound secret and mystery to every other. Jolted awake again, you are approaching another checkpoint that will lead either to your freedom or closer to your imprisonment. Time itself is perplexing and frightening in this book. Its prologue assures you that the story begins in the year of our Lord 1775, but 60 pages from the end, you tumble back to 1767, as Dr. Manette's letter, hidden in his cell in the Bastille, is read before the tribunal. When we first meet Dr. Manette, he answers only to the name of 105 North Tower, the cell in which he had been imprisoned for so long. He is found by his 17-year-old daughter Lucy in a small garret above a wine shop in Paris, escorted by Jarvis Laurie of Telson's Bank, London. Laurie had helped Lucy to escape to England when she was an infant, and they had believed her father, Dr. Manette, to be long dead. But now they find him shut up in his room, quietly engaged in shoemaking. He is cared for by the owner of the wine shop, the martial-looking Ernest Defarge, and his dark, watchful wife, Therese. The story might have ended here with the recalling to life of Dr. Manette and his settling in London with his daughter and old friend. But five years later, Lucy falls in love with Charles Darnay, an emigre aristocrat, who has renounced his family title and privileges and is now a teacher. Then one day, Charles Darnay receives a letter from an old servant, now imprisoned by the regime. Darnay feels honor bound to return to France and clear his servant's name. But arriving back on French soil, he is arrested and sentenced to death. Because Darnay is the nephew of the hated Marquis Saint-Evremonde. His position is hopeless. But then, in the final act of the story, an English barrister, a dissolute character, by the name of Sidney Carton, steps forward with a plan to rescue Darnay for Lucy's sake, fulfilling the promise of his unrequited love for her by sacrificing himself and going to the guillotine in Danay's place. Joining us to talk about the book is the inimitable Dr. Celine Prest, who teaches English literature for undergrads in humanities in Paris. She completed her PhD at the Sorbonne University in 2016. Her doctoral research was awarded the Andre Topia Prize by the Chancellerie de l'Université de Paris, and the Robert B. Partlow Jr. Prize by the Dickens Society. In 2019, Celine published a new edition of the Pickwick Papers for Gallimard. Celine, hello, and welcome to Charles Dickens' Brain on Fire.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Hi Dominic, it's great to be here. It's really one of my favorite books, and it's been one of my favorite books for a very long time now. I first found out about the book when I was quite young, when I was seven or eight, actually.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

What happened is that one day my father came back home with loads of adaptations of literary classics for children with illustrations. And one of these was A Tale of Two Cities. And this is my copy, my childhood copy. And the book did not spare any gruesome detail.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

I don't know how they thought this would be a good book for children, uh, but it was actually.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Children love all that, don't they? I think it's adults that worry. When you think of this book now, how accurate do you think Dickens is when he's talking about the French Revolution? I mean, how much is he just running away with his imagination and how much does it strike true to you? You know, growing up in France, you will have a very, very detailed understanding of the revolution and the republics that have existed for you since.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Dickens, historically speaking, in terms of events, is quite accurate. From the events of 1789 with the storming of the Bastille, uh, with the execution of Foulon, who was the finance secretary at the time. Uh, he also relates the events of the reign of terror starting in 1793, uh, with the institution of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which we see in the novel, they're the one who condemned Darnay to death. Uh, all of the deep hatred towards the émigré. Uh so the emigres during the French Revolution were the um the French citizens, the nobles who fled France between 1789 and let's say the 1790s. And so technically, all of this is true. But what strikes me as a French person is that um he mainly shows the terrifying aspects of the French Revolution and he mainly focuses on the reign of terror. And this makes sense to an extent because it seems to me that one of Dickens' favorite books was Carlyle's French Revolution.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

In fact, if I recall, Carlyle was very much what he stressed most was the irrational aspect of the French Revolution. And I think the word demonic is mentioned at one point. Uh, and it I think that he he um describes the sans-culotte, the revolutionaries as uh this uh multi-headed dragon breathing fire. And so I think that this is something that struck Dickens's imagination quite a lot. And so I feel that it might be for this reason that in The Tale of Two Cities he mainly emphasizes the violence, the sense of apocalypse, uh, the guillotine, um, the massacres. In fact, the first years of the French Revolution, the years between 1789 and 1791, 1792, were in fact years of hope and joy and collaboration between the king and not the subjects, but the citizens. It feels that book only focuses on the tragic aspects with without mentioning, I mean, all the benefits that they derived from the French Revolution, which uh which, after all, they do constitute the basis of our country. And the I mean the French Revolution did to an extent shape our values. The abolition of feudalism and social hierarchies in 1789, the abolition of all these old rules and the taxes which characterized the ancient regime, the abolition of all these special rights and special privileges of the nobility, of the clergy, and all of this led to a more egalitarian society. And we have this legacy of the French Revolution, this it's our motto. Uh liberté, egalité, fraternité, liberty, equality, fraternity.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Or death.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Or death.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

That's that's where it's difficult, isn't it? Or death. Something that we talked about a little bit before meeting for this chat was something that you had to say about a connection that Dickens made between the revolution and ancient Greek drama.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yes, absolutely. Um I feel that the scenes in Paris during the French Revolution seem to echo the ancient Greek myth of uh the Bacchanalia. It is a myth that is presented in uh Euripides' tragedy. And it actually deals with the return of Dionysus. So Dionysus was the god of wine, who's the god of intoxication, both joyful and murderous. So it deals with the return of Dionysus to Thebes, uh, where he was born, except that not everything goes to plan. Once he reaches Thebes, actually King Pentheus rejects his cult, he rejects his divinity, his divine status. If I recall, I think that he refuses to acknowledge him as the son of Zeus. And so Dionysus takes revenge by driving the women of the city completely insane. And so uh these women uh these are the Bacchi. And among these women, we can find the mother of King Pentheus, whose name is Agave, right? And so all of these, uh all of these women, all of the Bacchi, they they destroy the villages, they slaughter the animals, they they hunt down the men, and eventually they rush upon the king and they tear him to pieces with their own bare hands. And so the the rending, the tearing apart of the body, right? There is a word for this, this is called the sparagmus. And so they rush upon the king, and agave, so the mother, seizes her son's head and uh she brandishes the head of her own son, and she displays it like some sort of uh trophy to the entire city. And let's remember that they've been driven insane by the god. And so you I guess uh anyone can see the parallel with a tale of two cities. I don't know if you remember the the opening. The opening, I think it's chapter five. Uh I think it's the first time that we see Paris. This is before the French Revolution, though, but it's the first time we see Paris, and you've got the barrel of wine which falls and breaks in the streets of the Faubourg Saint Antoine, and you've got all of this wine that spills in in the street, and everybody, uh men, women, children, they stop everything they do to drink and to have a little apéro, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

All the people within reach had suspended their business or their idleness to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street had dammed it into little pools. These were surrounded each by its own jostling group or crowd according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined and sipped, or tried to help women who bent over their shoulders to sip before the wine had all run out between their fingers.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

It is supposed to be a very joyful scene, but at the same time it's also very worrying. There is this character, um he's called the tall joker. He dips his finger in the wine and he traces uh the word blood on the wall with his finger. I think that these are very biblical echoes, not not only Greek echoes, but very biblical echoes. We we can think of the um the biblical episode of the writing on the wall, which is in the book of Daniel, I believe, and it announces the fall of Babylon, and of course Babylon could be Paris. As I read it as an adult, what I realize is that it is fully a tale, that it is quite unrealistic, and even it has this mythical aspect to it.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

You've already lighted on a word that that comes in quite a lot that I noticed reading it for our conversation, is that unreal, unreality that Dickens himself uses, which I think is such a powerful way of describing that strange kind of feeling that people must have had during those years sometimes. Wh where times of crisis, it's very hard to to get a grip on on what's real.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Among the many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. They would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with light, and would find the people in a ghostly manner in the dead of night, circling hand in hand round a shriveled tree of liberty, or all drawn up together singing a liberty song.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

And the French Revolution is a founding myth of the French Republic. So it's no surprise that there should be all of this mythical, mystical aura to the story. And you you have this fairy tale opening. It sounds quite unreal.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Yes. 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. Something that really struck me this time is how that opening paragraph, it was the best of times, the worst of times, season of light, season of darkness, is how polarized every thought is in that. It's either one extreme or the other.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

It can only be one or the other.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

No grey zone. Which also accounts for the tragic events of the story. Because it can only be life or death.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Exactly. There's no middle way. Where you find charity and mercy and kind of all these sorts of things. Yes. But though Dickens obviously is horrified by the revolution in his writing, and probably thrilled as well, because he quite likes all the violence at the same time as going, oh, it's terrible. Eventually enjoys writing about it. But he's obviously he's very, very brutal to the Ancien regime as well, and very critical and scornful of Monseigneur. In your reading of it, do you find that your sympathy moves with Dickens? Because I think at first you do feel a lot of sympathy for the people who are suffering poverty, the downtrodden, the poor people, and you are on their side, I think. But then towards the end, I think when it's in the age of the terror, um, sympathy tips more to the innocence going in the tumbrel.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Definitely. This is the power of fiction which makes us, even as Republicans, have empathy for all the victims of the French Revolution, which nobody denies, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Because I was reading it knowing I was going to talk to you personally and thinking, as a Brit, there are some things in here that sound so much like the British I mean the character of Miss Pross, an odd character to pick up with straight away. But her kind of British kind of attitude is quite funny.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Yes, she refuses to speak French.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Although Miss Pross, through her long association with a French family, might have known as much of their language as of her own if she had had a mind, she had no mind in that direction. Consequently, she knew no more of that nonsense, as she was pleased to call it, than Mr Cruncher did. But there are, for a better word, there are what I think of as Frenchisms. So when Defarge asks Dr. Manette in the garret, can you bear more light if I open the shutters? And Dr. Manette says, I must bear it if you let it in. That to me sounds like a very French response, a very kind of almost philosophical, balanced kind of response, and a phrase like without doubt or uh very willingly.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

To you do all of the French characters sound foreign? Yeah, they sound genuinely French in those little moments.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Even Madame de Farge's eh, well, yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Yeah, that's so French. And as a French person reading an English book on French people, I felt that foreignness as well. I felt that it was almost impossible to identify with Madame Dufarge.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

She was absolutely without pity. If she had ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her. It was nothing to her that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers. She saw not him, but them. It was nothing to her that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

She's almost never called by her first name, and it's very difficult to identify with her and to have empathy with her, even though we know that her whole family was decimated by Dièvre Monde.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Yes. So her sister is abused, raped, and she dies, and her brother, to avenge that sister, is killed.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Right, and her her father dies of heartbreak, and she is left an orphan.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Yes. Do you think she's real? Is this where it's kind of fairy tale? Or do you think that person could exist or did exist?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

She sounds like a fairy tale character, especially since she's a tricoteuse. You know, so the the the women who would knit in front of the of the guillotine. And I don't know if the tricoteuse really existed. This sounds almost mythical, you know, like the um like the Greek fates who would spun the thread of life and then cut the thread of life.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Well, that leads to the other topic of threads, doesn't it? Because you have the golden thread, which is Lucy, and then you have the white hair of Dr. Manette as a thread, and then the thread of the knitting women.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

And you have the dark you have the dark hair of uh Madame de Farge. Um this character is quite fascinating because um the way Dickens describes her, she is very sensual at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe, carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough in a certain weird way, and her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her bosom was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred and walking with the confident tread of such a character, and with the supple freedom of a woman who had habitually walked in her girlhood, barefoot and bare legged, on the brown sea sand, Madame de Farge took her way along the streets.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

I don't know what to make of her.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Well strangely, if there's one moment where I do have pity for her, it's in that description of her having no pity herself. Because you see where she's come from, and there's that line in the very final chapter about if you crush humanity out of shape. Right. And I think that's she's just that she's the strongest example of that. What I think is that she could represent to a 19th century British reader the very worst of what you think the French are like. With uh cutting off people's heads, you know, basically. But um, of course, you have other wonderful French characters that Dickens offsets that. So he he can play with that stereotype, and then you have Lucy Manette and the Dr.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Manette and Charles Darney, and these are these are wonderful characters, even Defarge to a certain extent, because he he is still so faithful to the uh to the doctor. He's torn, in fact, between his humanity and his ideals, the principles of the French Revolution, his loyalty to his wife. And um you can see him trying to defend the doctor. He says we should stop here, we should stop now. And this is quite a um he's quite a grey character. Remember when we said uh earlier that there was no grey zone? Uh actually Defarge might be. There is humanity in him, but um, in the best sense and in the worst sense, he has empathy for the doctor, he has loyalty for the doctor and the worst sense, in the sense that he's he's a bit of a coward. He doesn't dare standing up to his wife, but he is a taunt character. Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

That moment you mentioned about him saying to his wife about stopping now. There's a quote about tell the wind and the fire or The C to stop, which I think is amazing, and that you see right into her in that moment.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Which makes her an allegorical character. She doesn't seem real. I mean, who speaks like that?

SPEAKER_02 22:28

I think you're right about Ernest Defage. Is he Jacques number four as well? The Jacques thing is very strange.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Right. They have one name. Do you know where the name Jacques derives from?

SPEAKER_02 22:38

No.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

It was originally a term which referred to the peasant uprising against the Lords in the Middle Ages. In fact, uh they would call it a Jacquerie. And so over the centuries it's come to mean popular insurrection, especially by the lower classes, by peasants. And so the the word jacquerie uh has a historical meaning. But here the name Jacques stands, almost stands for everyman. In fact, they are an everyman, all of these Jacques. In the same way, uh Evremond, you can hear every and monde, monde, which means world in French. So Monseigneur is also a kind of aristocratic everyman.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

So aristocrats are all the same.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

And actually, even the term, the title monseigneur, passes around the book and is often referring to the people we never meet. Yeah, yeah.

unknown 23:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

I think in the in the prison, there are a number of monseigneurs, and they're all indistinguishable.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

In the same way the Jacques are all the same.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

That's so interesting. And and you reminded me of that moment in the prison where you see the aristocrats like ghosts because of their surroundings. So they have all the manners and the airs and graces, and the society of aristocrats were in this horrible dungeon, La Force or La Conciergerie. Oh, the Conciergerie is the place you never come out of. Is that right? La Force, you still have a chance of escape. Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all. The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Well, the conciergerie was where Marie Antoinette was kept a prisoner. And this is where Darnet is sent at the end of the novel. And as a French person reading that Darnet sent the Conciergerie. It doesn't sound good.

SPEAKER_04 25:05

It doesn't sound good.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

It sounds very bad. What struck me uh very much is that the storming of the Bastille, which is one of the founding events of the French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, Dickens seems more interested in what's going on inside the Bastille, which is Dufarge going to retrieve Manet's manuscript.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yes, 105 North Tower.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Right. Rather than what's going on outside. And uh from the outside we only hear rumors and cries, but we do not actually see what's going on. We only see Duffarge going into the Bastille for a very mysterious reason, which we learn about many chapters later. And this is quite striking.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Pass that torch slowly along these walls that I may see them, said Defarge to the turnkey. The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes. Stop. Look here, Jacques. AM croaked Jacques III as he read greedily. Alexandre Manette, said Defarge in his ear, following the letters with his swart forefinger deeply ingrained with gunpowder. And Defarge, Ernest Defarge becomes a hero. Come then, cried Defarge in a resounding voice.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Patriots and friends, we are ready! The bestie!

SPEAKER_02 26:39

With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm bells ringing, drums beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach. The attack began. Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke, in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannoneer, Defarge of the wine shop worked like a manful soldier. The Christianity element is interesting as well, and I don't know whether this is again 19th-century British sensibility against French Republican ideals of where there isn't a state religion anymore, you know. But it does strike me at the end, you know, that and you did admit to me in our chat, I hope you don't mind me mentioning this, but you were possibly upset again reading the ending of the book. It is amazingly powerful, and I don't know how that happens. It possibly the ending has that power because of the wave upon wave of momentum and in the writing that kind of carries you there at the end. But it struck me as so interesting that the the quote from the Bible, I am the resurrection and the life that Sidney Carton carries in his head. That's so radical and rebellious in that environment. Because here suddenly Christianity is like treason, perhaps. What he's got in his head there.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yes, because what the revolutionary did is that they got rid of any official religion. They got rid of the church. And so for Sidney Cotton to come up and to quote these lines from the Bible is quite radical indeed.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

And somehow more powerful, because it's placed in a situation where it's you know, there'd be hostility to it.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

That's true.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

These solemn words, which had been read at his father's grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sailing on above him. I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

The self sacrifice of Cotton at the end, of course, is quite Christ-like, in the sense that somebody has to sacrifice himself, herself, in order to break the rule of history, in order to redeem the sins of the revolutionaries and also of the ancient regime. I mean, I think this is why the ending is so powerful, because throughout the novel you've got this sense of fate. You've got Madame de Farge, who acts as a kind of um of Greek fate. You've got you've got, of course, the historical events, and you know how all of this ends. And so you feel that all of these characters have a fate, that they're condemned, that there's no way out. And until the very end, you're not sure whether they'll be able to make it out of France. And yet, and I think this is what the moral of this tale is, is that there is no such thing as fate. There is no such thing as the hold of history, there is no such thing as the inevitability of historical events. And you always have the possibility of freedom. And Sidney Cotton strikes me as a very free character who breaks all of the mechanisms that have been put in place in order to lead to the final tragedy. And what Sidney Cotton's sacrifice tells us is that there is always the possibility of renewal, of fertility. And there is a form of resurrection at the end when he, in his last vision, uh he sees this boy who is named after him. The boy of Lucy and Charles, who is named after him and who will become a barrister, just like him.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

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.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

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. It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

The last vision of Carton is one of hope. It's directed towards the future, it is a prophecy. It shows that uh we can cut the ties, the threads, right? Whether they be golden or not, uh, the threads of the past.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Yes, and I don't know if you feel this, but reading that last vision, I take it to be totally true what he sees. I don't doubt that what he sees is the is the future that will be. Do you feel that?

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Yes, yes. It feels uh it feels like he he's almost like a kind of prophet at that point. There is something prophetic about uh this uh this last vision. Uh even though uh he does not actually utter these words, it's just the narrator who imagines what these last words would be. Um Sidney does not say anything at all. His last words are yes. When you look at the last page, there is the uh the seamstress who tells him, You comfort me so much, I'm so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come? And he says yes. And I believe these are Sidney Carton's last words. Which reminds me of uh another uh iconic yes, it is the the yes of Molly Bloom at the end of uh Ulysses, yes, I said yes, I will, yes. Uh there is something quite powerful in that ultimate yes.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

In the chapter just before this ending, Sidney Carton stops drinking. He eats his food and he pours away his drink. He doesn't drink like he used to, and he starts to look at himself and tidy his appearance and tie his hair up properly. That he prepares himself for this.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

He changes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

I think one of the most touching moments is his conversation with Laurie, who is a fantastic characteristic.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Laurie strice me very much because he he is a very mechanical character and he's obsessed with his duty towards the Telson bank.

unknown 33:55

Of course.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Well, we are a nation of shopkeepers, so very important.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

And he is about to denounce Jerry because of his activities as a resurrection man. Remember, amid all of the tragedies of the French Revolution, this is what he focuses on.

SPEAKER_04 34:13

Yes.

unknown 34:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

And so there is something quite mechanical about him, which creates a lot of humour. And that humour I feel is very Dickensian.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Yes. He reminds me of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. That's true. In that he would say that well, I don't really I don't have a heart. And yet all his actions show him to have a heart. So when he first meets Lucy Minette in Dover, and he's he's saying, Business, business, Miss Monette, I'm I'm just bit You know that he's really feeling for her inside. But there's something there's something of the English character here of suppressing the emotion. I love this moment of um actually Madame Defarge saying the English are a cold race. Because she's talking about Lucy Minette being very beautiful and why hasn't she been married yet? The English are cold. Which I think is so interesting, and that's that's one little humanizing part for Madame Defarge. But anyway, that there's something of that, I think, isn't there?

SPEAKER_00 35:18

That that English stereotype of which makes him so reliable at the end. He is the one who manages to get everyone out of the country, and they all depend on him. And this is because he is cold, he's business-like, he's got he's got his sense of duty, and he will get his mission accomplished. So it's actually quite important that he should be so mechanical, I think, I believe was the word I used. It's because in this context of the French Revolution, you can't be emotional.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Otherwise you go mad.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

Like the poor doctor. Yes. So just talking about grey characters, of course, Sidney Carton. Is he possibly the greyest of all the grey characters? Because there's so much within him, isn't there? There are so many twisted turmoils that go on for him.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

That's true. He's presented as a as a depraved character, and you don't know how far this deprivation goes. And I feel that because all of this is silence, you can imagine the worst, right? What is he actually up to in the London streets?

SPEAKER_02 36:34

Yes. There is something though interesting in his psychology to me, which is Dickens describes him as a man incapable of his own help at one point. And the fact that he always helps others and puts others before himself. So he's helping Striver, one of the most awful, worthless human beings. Every evening helping Striver get ready for court the next day.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

And Stryver reaps up all the glory.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Yeah. And then obviously finally at the end, he makes the ultimate sacrifice.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

And you feel that he is quite determined. He he planned everything very carefully. Almost as if he had foresight, but he he does have foresight. He is a prophet. Yes, he's such a mysterious character.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

I think he's very interesting, isn't he? Because he is really the romantic hero of the book, I think. But he starts in completely the wrong place. Whereas Charles Darnay really should be the romantic lead, the you know, he's the conventional one, the sound one, the good one. And of course Lucy's very pure as well, isn't she?

SPEAKER_00 37:42

That's true. Which makes her not a very interesting character. I think I prefer Madame Defarge, see. Madame Dufarge has more um asperity to her. You want to know more about her backstory. You want to know more about the way she was raised, what happened to her. Whereas Lucie, she's just pure light. I mean, that's her name, Lucie Light Lux.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Because she's one of Dickens' saints, isn't she?

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Yeah, she is. Well, she's the angel of the house. What's interesting to her about her is her double identity. Is she English? Is she French? Where does she belong? She's an uprooted character.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Well, it's interesting, because you know what Miss Pross thinks about the French. But she's totally devoted to Lucy. So either she doesn't see Lucy as French or she feels that she's rescued Lucy from the French.

unknown 38:32

I don't know. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

I suppose she has courage in her way, doesn't she? In the fact that she's very young when she makes the trip from Dover. She's 17, isn't she? And she's she's very, very mature and very grounded and quietly possibly stoic and all of these things. But no, she doesn't have her moment on the in the Alps rescuing somebody or anything like that, does she? She doesn't have any kind of I suppose she's the angel that restores her father, recalls him to life.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

What is interesting about her is that she acts as a kind of medium, doesn't she? She she hears echoes, doesn't she? Uh and she interprets the echoes for her household. She can hear all of the steps.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

And she has a kind of foresight, doesn't she, as well, again, with what they portend. I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives. There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so, Sidney Carton struck in in his moody way. The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re echoed with the tread of feet, some, as it seemed, under the windows, some as it seemed in the room, some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether, all in the distant streets, and not one within sight. Are all of these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us? I don't know, Mr. Darnay. I told you it was a foolish fancy. But you asked for it. There's a strange relationship between Carton and Darnay, though, isn't there, on the day that Carton obviously rescues Darnay the first time.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

He doesn't even like Darnay. He he says as much. He doesn't really care about Darnay. His saving Darnay was more like an intellectual challenge.

SPEAKER_02 40:34

That's right, and I think the chapter even ends with Carton looking in the mirror saying, admit it, you hate the fellow. Something like that.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

And there is something very supernatural about that whole echo uh medium thing. And what is interesting about uh A Tale of Two Cities is that it's a historical novel, so it should be based and grounded in reality, and yet it is a supernatural tale, it is a thriller, it is a detective novel, it is all of this at the same time. And what I meant by unrealistic at the beginning is that uh I I did not only mean the um account of the French Revolution, because the account of the French Revolution I think corresponds to reality. But there are there are events which cannot be accounted for realistically. For instance, uh think of the um uh the manuscript of Dr. Manette. So this is the manuscript uh that he writes during his stay in the Bestille.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

On the last day of 1767?

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Yes, that's right. It's I think it's ten years after he is arrested.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my Dorful cell in the Bastille during the last month of the year 1767. I write it under stolen intervals under every difficulty. I designed to secrete it in the wall of the chimney where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there when I and my sorrows are dust.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

He writes this manuscript where he tells the story of that night. He was arrested, he tells about the sins of the Evremont family.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

The patient was a woman of great beauty and young, assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

I noticed that these bonds were all portions of a gentleman's dress.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

On one of them, which was a fringe scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a noble and the letter E.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

That's a really interesting part in the book, though, as well, because something else I feel like Dr. Manette's letter does. If our sympathies are tipping against the revolution, the letter brings you back, and you have the most disgusting, horrible behaviour of the Everymond brothers.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

You can only imagine what happened to that poor woman who was driven mad and who died because of her rape.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Yep. And her brother comes to avenge her with an old sword. And of course the Everymond that he faces. Is it is it the uncle? It yes, it's the uncle. The uncle is aristocratic and fences every day. Manages to kill the brother. My glance had fallen but a few moments before on the fragments of a broken sword lying among the hay. That weapon was a gentleman's. In another place lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's. It's amazing that bit, isn't it? Because it falls in Darnay's second trial before the tribunal, and the Defarges produce, Ernest Defarge produces this letter that he's found in the cell. But it's amazing. That story within a story, that letter that takes a whole chapter, is so powerful. That that's kind of nearly an entire book in itself.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

It's a novel within the novel. And the manuscript was written in 1767 and it was hidden. And then it was uh retrieved by Defarge in 1789. That's to say, more than 20 years after it was written, and it is produced during the trial, and the trial is 1793. That manuscript has surprising longevity, especially if uh you think of um there is this anecdote early on in the novel where the uh I think it is Darnay, he tells the story of a manuscript that was found in the cell of the Tower of London. Yes, and the manuscript in the Tower of London actually disintegrates into dust. But Manet's manuscript does not disintegrate into dust, which is quite surprising. That's what a good manuscript is supposed to do, right? Disintegrate into dust, you know, much much like the um papyri in the uh Egyptian uh tombs, right? They disintegrate into dust. But this is not the case here, and moreover, it seems perfectly legible, it is perfectly intact, perfectly preserved.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Yes, he says he can't see what he's writing, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Right! And uh if you if you remember the ink is written, I I think it's made from his blood. He wrote using his blood and suit. So all in all, what is this manuscript? There's something very supernatural about that manuscript. I have a theory, it's the curse.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

The current oh yes, interesting. Marquis, when all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and yours to the last of your bad race to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon your brother, the worst of a bad race, to answer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him as a sign that I do it.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Twice he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the finger yet raised, and as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid him down dead. There is a character, might be your favourite character in the book, I'm not sure, but you you like Jerry. Oh yes, I like Jerry. Jerry Cruncher. Where do you start with Jerry?

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Um so Jerry. Jerry works for the Telsen Bank.

SPEAKER_02 47:33

Amongst other things, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

And to make ends meet, he is also a resurrection man. So how would we define a resurrection man? He would dig up bodies at night and sell them as atomical specimens, I guess. Which would have brought him a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 47:53

So that's okay then. Yes, he's definitely he's described at one point an English bulldog, isn't he? Lots of nice details, like he has very spiky hair and rusty nails, and he he sucks the rust off his nails. That's really gross.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

And um his wife is always praying for his soul because of what he does. Because of digging up bodies in the dead of night. Yes, his poor wife. Yes, his poor wife.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

And he objects to it.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Yes. He resents the praying.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Yes. He calls it flopping, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Right.

SPEAKER_02 48:30

And he always assumes that she's praying against him. What? said Mr Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot.

SPEAKER_03 48:39

You're at it again, are you? I was only saying my prayers. Saying your prayers, you're a nice woman. What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying again me?

SPEAKER_02 48:50

I was not praying against you, I was praying for you. You weren't, and if you were, I won't be took at liberty with.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

What I like about Jerry is that uh he's a source of comic relief in the episodes of of the terror. Right? You've got all of these heads rolling. And then you've got Jerry. I mean, I laughed out loud reading his lines, even though they're in Paris, even though Charles Downey is condemned to death. And he was a very welcome addition to uh to the cast of characters. And also I feel that we are a bit like Jerry because Jerry sees things that he does not understand. He has to deliver messages that he does not understand. Remember at the very beginning of the novel, he it he has this coded message uh recalled to life and he doesn't understand. And we, the reader, we do not understand. And so we're very much like Jerry. We're a witness of what's going on, and we had to wait for the story to be told to us very slowly, see?

SPEAKER_02 50:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

So I have I have a soft part for for Jerry.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Yes, I do too. Yes, he's he's great, and I think it is the last moment where he um vows, he makes two vows to Miss Pross, doesn't he? At this very critical moment in the book where Madame Defarge is on her way to try and kill them all. And Jerry's going, right, I'm gonna do this. Would you do me the favour, Miss, to take notice of two promises in wows, what is my wishes for to record in this here crisis? Oh, for gracious sake, cried Miss Pross, still wildly crying. Record them at once and get them out of the way. I can't remember what his two vows are.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

One of them is to give up Yes, uh give up the digging up and uh and be nice, be kind to his wife.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Key character we've not really talked about a lot is is the doctor, Dr. Manette, who I think is the complexity that comes in there, I think, is so brilliant the way Dickens uh understands the human mind. The human mind, yeah. And trauma. When when he's in the garret and Monsieur Dufarge is, you know, trying to get Dr. Burnett to reply and speak. And the the obsessiveness, that shoe bench. He escapes and then he falls back.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

He's drawn back, drawn back to his shoemaking days in the bestie. He is unable to face the reality of what he went through. He can only face it in the third person. Dr. Manette is traumatized. And uh I feel that here we've got an instance of Dickens' realism, actually, and he was he was very good at identifying the mechanism of the mind and the workings of the mind. He almost had this kind of um scientist-like capacity to observe and to put into words what happens to the body, what happens to the mind once it's been affected or infected.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

Yeah. Talking about the third person, obviously Laurie again is brilliant at drawing Dr. Manette away from the bench when he falls back towards it and sort of creates this scenario of someone he knows who's suffering and asking the doctor for advice, and the doctor is healing himself in the third person's.

SPEAKER_00 52:22

Remember when we when we talked about Laurie's mechanical quality, we need Manette needs somebody who is ruthless and mechanical to get rid of the true shoe bench. I mean it's heart-wrenching.

SPEAKER_04 52:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

It's almost cruel the way he takes that away from the doctor because it's its only coping mechanism.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

And then later on, after the second tribunal for Danay, when Dr. Manette has been heroic and a leader for all of them, he then falls to tearing his hair again and is looking for his bench. But in terms of the workings of the mind as well, I feel the same with Danay before Carton arrives to rescue him. Those moments of counting the hours away and the thoughts that come unbidden into his mind. I mean again that mental health understanding seems very modern to me, that.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

Yes. He's fighting his thoughts, and then his thoughts spring up and come up in the prison. Yes, you're right, it's it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the numbers he would never hear again. Nine, gone forever. Ten, gone forever, eleven, gone forever, twelve, coming on to pass away. After a hard contest with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down, softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over. He could walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them. Twelve. Gone forever. There is one character who is obviously up there with the worst, is Monsignor. Oh Monseigneur. What do you think of when you when you think of Monseigneur? It starts in a comic way because you've got all these people making his morning chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

He justifies the French Revolution. There is nothing redeemable about that character. He's almost snake-like. I think he his nose is described as two slits. I believe he stands for the rules of French nobility. He is Evremond. He is everyman. He's an aristocratic everyman. And why should Charles Darnay pay for the crimes of his uncle? Because it's not his father who committed the deed. It's not his father who raped the young peasant and who killed the brother. It's his uncle. And so why should the sins of the uncle visit the nephew? What is the biblical saying? It's the sins of the father, right? It's the sins of the father that should visit the children. But here we've got the sins of the uncle.

SPEAKER_02 55:23

Well, I think this is the whole revolutionary mindset, is that you you don't ever separate the person from a title.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

What do you think of uh the He's so important for the balance and the humanity There needs to be Monseigneur for there to be a French Revolution.

SPEAKER_02 55:42

Yeah. He's so polite to Darnay when he comes to visit, but then as he leaves, he has the thought of, oh burn my nephew in his bed. Right. Underneath that mask, such brutality and evil. What I find also so interesting about him is the chateau itself, as an extension of him, with the stone faces.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

The stone faces that re respond to the event.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

With the light of the fire, when the chateau goes up in flames, the expressions seem to change, and the Marquis's own expression when he's murdered is described and it's seen in the faces around the chateau as well.

SPEAKER_00 56:19

Yes, another instance of the fairy tale dimension.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

For three heavy hours the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape. The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard, both melting away like the minutes that were falling from the spring of time. Then the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened. Until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. Oh, thank you, that that um enriches my perception of the book actually in ways that I I mean it because I've never um I've been aware that there's a chorus all the way through. It's either echoing footsteps, or it's shadows appearing, or it's or it's the women knitting, or it's the people in the courts in England or in France. And then it talks about the faces at the chateau, you know, being masks, and some of the characters having masks as well, where they hide what's going on underneath them. And um yeah, I think there's there's a real strong Greek thread running through that. So that's that's amazing. Thank you so much, it's been wonderful.