Analysis of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 19, 2025

Among the great Charles Dickens’s final novels, A Tale of Two Cities well represents his maturity as a novelist. Like his previous works, this novel investigates man’s capacity for inhumanity. However, its emphasis on the cause for the abuses men heap on one another as an unwillingness to learn from history is something new.

While not his most critically praised work, A Tale of Two Cities is Dickens’s most widely read, continuing its obvious popularity at the time of its printing. It ran in serial installments in the newly created periodical All the Year Round from April through November 1859. The first issue of the new publication sold 120,000 copies, with subsequent issues selling around 100,000. It has remained a best-seller into the 21st century. Accounting for that fact may be in part New Historicism’s theory that all historical fiction is ultimately about the era in which the writer writes, an idea that could be expanded to include, according to critic Jane Smiley, about the era in which it is read. When art mirrors reality, audiences find it irresistible.

Dickens had long been interested in the French Revolution, not unusual in light of his constant emphasis on the importance of social revolution. He repeatedly read Thomas Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution, even carrying the work with him. Carlyle had met Dickens, knew of his high regard, and sent the author boxes of research when he learned of the project.

Not only did Dickens value the idea of revolution in general, he particularly valued the French, having visited France many times, becoming fluent in the language. In addition, a relationship with the 18-year-old Ellen Ternan, following Dickens’s bitter and well-publicized divorce, may have affected Dickens’s desire to create a feminine character mirroring Ellen’s sweetness, possibly accomplished with Lucie Manette. For whatever reason, Dickens developed in A Tale of Two Cities more in-depth female characters than ever before. The passion of Madame Defarge, who can reply to Lucie’s appeal for mercy on the basis that they were both women and mothers with “Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?” provides evidence of her devotion to covert revolutionary activity delegated previously to male Dickens characters.

Both London and Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution provide the setting, allowing a consideration of the conflict in two distinct cultures. Dr. Manette seeks refuge in London with his daughter, Lucie, following his release from 18 years of imprisonment in the Bastille, due to his innocent relationship with the aristocratic Evrémonde family. Dickens seems to emphasize the peril in associating with those involved in what others may judge criminal activity, whether or not it is so judged by civil authorities. The Madame Defarges and the Vengeances of the world exist as society’s conscience, although jaded by in-depth suffering that leads to a desire for revenge.

Lucie is in love with Charles Darnay, a descendant of the despicable Evrémondes but an honest and decent citizen, allowing Dickens to enforce the idea that choice for change remains open to every individual.

In one of literature’s most famous love triangles, Lucie is loved by Sydney Carton, who will become the unwilling hero of the novel. Carton’s similar physical appearance to that of Darnay helps achieve Darnay’s release from unfounded charges, foreshadowing Carton’s later crucial role in saving Darnay’s life.

When Darnay returns to France to help free a servant unjustly accused by the revolutionaries, he himself is imprisoned, freed on the basis of Manette’s intercession. Although Darnay should immediately return to England, his wife, and their daughter, little Lucie, he lingers in France, determined to make right his ancestors’ wrongs, a doomed undertaking. He is again arrested and condemned to death on the basis of Manette’s own written words against the Evrémondes.

Dickens hints at the power of words, particularly when placed in powerful hands, which can employ them to ironic ends. Prior to Darnay’s execution, Carton travels to France to support Lucie’s unsuccessful efforts to free her husband. When those efforts fail, he decides to replace Darnay in prison, their physical similarities again allowing the mistaken identity, and the Darnays escape to England. A friendship with an also doomed young woman allows redemption of the once-drunken Carton, in a way that his love for the pure figure of Lucie could not.

His closing statement regarding “the far better” thing represented in his execution has become an immediately recognizable metaphor for the value of self-sacrifice.

Dickens did not, however, believe Carton’s act should be evaluated as sacrifice. Carton remains the only one of the novel’s characters not metaphorically imprisoned by history. The past does not paralyze him into inactivity, or doom him to repeat actions already proven improvident, as it does the Mannettes and Darnay.

The execution experience provides his sole spiritual connection with another human being, the young servant girl, and as is evident in Dickens’s quotation of the biblical passage that includes the phrase “whosoever liveth in me shall never die,” Carton views his substitution for Darnay as his one opportunity to live on in the memories of his acquaintances.

He does not give in to the temptation to flee, and Dickens stresses that bowing to temptation can lead to chaos. Although one can understand Darnay’s temptation to rectify the past, and the revolutionaries’ desire to reduce their attempts to correct society to a force for revenge on personal enemies, the choices of such paths inevitably lead to self-destruction.

Carton also ignored the temptation for self-aggrandizement in his final action, choosing instead to die with a dignity and purpose that allowed him to gain through his actions.

The novel remains often taught, studied, and reproduced in various media forms. The application of its themes to any era will support its continued popularity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hawes, Donald. Who’s Who in Dickens. London: Routledge, 2001.
Jordan, John O., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Sanders, Andrew. Companion to A Tale of Two Cities. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
Smiley, Jane. Charles Dickens. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002.