Krishna
We have reviewed two books of Charles Dickens earlier here, Hard Times and Great Expectations.
This book is very famous and Dickens himself considered it one of his best works. Please forgive me if I found parts of the book not entirely to my liking. Why? Read on.
Even the people who have not read this classic would have heard the opening lines, which have become a classic : “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’. The actual sentence goes on much longer and much in that vein, but that part has become much more famous than the story itself, in that more people know that opening line than have read the story.
The story itself happens in the year 1775. A carriage is struggling up a hill with three passengers – who don’t know each other – are traveling. One of them is Jarvis Lorry. A messenger, Jerry intercepts them to give a message to Mr Lorry.
The message simply says that he has to wait in London for the arrival of a young girl whom he should escort to his bank’s French branch. Miss Manette duly meets him at the inn and asks him to accompany her and, in addition, tell her why she is going there. All she knows is that it had something to do with the property of her estranged father.
He starts telling her about a customer – a French gentleman who married an English Lady. Like the girl’s father, Monsieur Manette, this man was also from Beauvois. And this customer was the Doctor of that town.
But she seems to recognize him as the man who brought her, as a two year old, to her mother when her father passed away. This memory of hers seems to shock him.
They make a life for themselves in England, and apart from some times when he paces with agitation or starts with great fear when some old event is mentioned, Doctor Manette seems to be recovering from his ordeal.
Meanwhile Monseigneur the Marquis is an evil man who thinks nothing of running over peasants in his carriage (He kills a baby and throws a gold coin ‘in recompense’). In typical fashion, Dickens shows people dying of starvation and desperate while the rich have all the wealth and comforts around them and even do not treat the poor as belonging to the same human race as they do.
Both Mr Stryver, a friend of Sydney Carton as well as Charles Darnay both seem to want to marry Miss Lucie. Doctor Manette seems to think that Sydney also is in the ring, wooing Lucie. Stryver is dissuaded from his efforts by Lorry, the selfsame banker who in the beginning of the book rescued Doctor Manette. Sydney Carton meets Lucie, tells his attraction to her, but declares that he is a dried husk of a man and is not worthy to be her husband.
There is a very confusing section about the pub owner Lafarge and his wife, and how they were involved in Manette’s life. Not well described, a surprise in the book of Dickens. (Of course, this is just my view and not a generally held view, I am sure).
Confusion abounds. When Lucy finally decides to marry Charles Darnay and go for her honeymoon, Manette reverts to his prisoner behaviour, obsessively making shoes and not recognizing anyone around, reluctant to leave the room, let alone the house. After a week he returns to normal behaviour.
Even when the story goes into flashback and describes the French revolution on how the peasants gathered to round up and kill the aristocrats (not to mention imprisoning the royalty in their palace) the story moves with a juddering lack of focus, very unusual for Dickens whose prose is sharp as a knife. (See the review for Great Expectations earlier in this space)
The description of the French Revolution and how Lucie’s husband Charles Darnay is caught up in it and jailed is very good. How Manette and friends rescue him is also well told. But since the overall story is all confusing, this book does not measure up to the other classics of Dickens. (Yes I am aware that mine is a minority view and it is almost blasphemy to admit this of one of the most famous of the works of Charles Dickens!)
Darnay is rearrested almost immediately and Manette is resolved to release him again, whatever it takes.
The second part of the book after Charles is in trouble is indeed good but I still feel that the preamble is rather too long and is not entirely good.
When Charles is tried by the mob a second time, a letter is provided to the Judge who reads it aloud. It was written many years ago when Monette was in prison and talks of a boy and a girl. The girl was poor and was forcibly raped by the younger of the two brothers. When the boy went to ask for justice, he was mortally wounded by the younger brother. It so happened that Monette was fetched to help them, only to watch them die uselessly. The younger brother’s bride came to see him later and showed her young son to him before moving away. That son was Charles, and when Monette discovered that Lucie was in love with him, he first was reluctant to agree but later indeed gave his blessing.
The other twist is that Madam Dafarge who is the wife of Monsieur Dafarge, the bar owner. She is implacable in her knitting but finally reveals that she is the elder sister of the girl who was killed. Now she wants her revenge and she was behind the rearrest of Charles. She wants the entire Monette family destroyed (Lucie, the baby, Charles and even Dr Monette). After getting Charles arrested and evidence produced to convict him, she is still not satisfied.
Charles and Dr Monette are stuck now. They are powerless. Sydney Carton has a brave plan to save him and is in the crowd when Charles Darnay is brought back before the rowdy tribunal to be tried. He goes in with the help of an inside informant, and drugs Charles. He switches clothes and has Charles carried away as him and takes the place of Charles and goes to give his life for the sake of Lucie.
So an unconscious Charles and a deeply depressed Monette (who is not even aware of what is going on around him) are bundled into a carriage and driven towards England by Lorry, their friend. Of course Lucie and the kid are in the same carriage.
Madam Dafarge is determined to get them and, unaware that they just fled, goes to Monette’s house after complaining to the authorities about the treason of Lucie and Dr Monette.
The servant, Miss Pross, in the process of locking up and leaving, to be picked up in front of the school to be whisked to England – after the group has escaped – stands her ground and pretends that the family is still inside, delaying Dafarge and giving precious time for them to escape. In the ensuing tussle between two determined women, one of them falls dead and the other has become deaf for life.
The story ends with the heartrending sacrifice of Sydney Carlton fully described and how he met his end with courage, fortitude and peace in his face.
A nice book, but a very confusing first part.
6/10
== Krishna