Critical Contexts

The next section of this volume consists of four deliberately diverse “Critical Contexts” essays. The first features a historical approach; the second provides an overview of recent criticism; the third uses a particular “critical lens”; and the fourth adopts a comparative method. The “historical essay,” by Jeremy Tambling, is titled “Shadows, Secrecy, and Violence.” Tambling observes that in both of Dickens’s historical novels—Barnaby Rudge and A Tale—capital punishment is a “main subject and the source of fascination” and that the “crimes” in both books are political. “A Tale of Two Cities,” he notes, “opens by reprising statements about eighteenth-century torture in France, and anarchy in London, and the uselessness of ‘the hangman, ever busy, and ever worse than useless’ (9), not least because he was working indiscriminately and in a way which implies torture and inept violence working against violence and lack of order in the streets.” Tambling’s essay explores all kinds of violence in A Tale as well as the fraught issue of secrecy in this novel.

In an essay titled “Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: A Survey of Modern Editions, 1960—2020,” Robert Evans notes that “readers of most classic books almost always read those texts in particular editions, the best of which provide helpful introductions and copious notes.” The purposes of the introductions in particular, Evans observes, “are usually two-fold: to allow an eminent scholar to offer his or her own particular ‘take’ on the novel, and to allow him or her to survey what other scholars have had to say about the work. Really good introductions,” Evans contends, “often fulfill both of these functions. For that reason, reading multiple introductions can help readers get a strong sense of what has been thought and said about an important book. Such reading can also let readers see how approaches to the book have evolved over the years and decades.” For all these reasons, Evans surveys some of the best scholarly introductions to A Tale that have appeared in good editions over the past sixty years.

In an essay that employs a particular critical lens in an article titled “Fleeing to Freedom, Driving to Death: The Motif of the Journey in A Tale of Two Cities,” John Rignall suggests that Dickens’s “imagination as a novelist could be characterized as being ‘always on the road.’” Travel is emphasized in many of his books, especially in his novel featuring characters shuttling back and forth between London and Paris. But Rignall also explores another important motif in A Tale—the imagery associated with the change from one day to the next. “The alternation of scenes of sunset and sunrise,” he observes, “creates a pattern in which darkening decline towards an end gives way to the advancing light of returning life, with its metaphorical implications of resurrection; and this pattern relates the fates of the characters and the larger movement of history to the natural cycle of night and day.”

Finally, in the last of the contextual essays, titled “Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, and the Doubling of Characters in the Historical Novel,” Rignall compares and contrasts Dickens’s novel with works by Walter Scott. He argues, for instance, that in Scott’s great novel Waverley, “the paired figures of Edward Waverley and Fergus Mac-Ivor are the literary ancestors of Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, whether or not Dickens, who knew and admired Scott’s novels, was conscious of the parallel when he was writing. In both cases,” Rignall continues, “the doubled heroes point up, in their opposition and interaction, the complex relationship between history and fiction in the genre of the historical novel.” Thus, “at the end of Dickens’s novel Carton, like Mac-Ivor, goes to a death determined by history, the history of the French Revolution, although it is Darnay who is initially implicated in the Revolution and its causes through his family; and it is only Carton’s self-sacrifice that permits the Frenchman to escape into the domestic happy ending that is the preserve of fiction.”

Critical Readings: I

The purpose of the “critical readings” section in this book (as well as in all other books of the Critical Insights series) is to provide various deliberately different perspectives on the work or theme being explored. The first “critical reading” offered here comes from Leona Toker in an essay titled “Urban Intelligentsia in A Tale of Two Cities.” Toker notes that “one of the most arresting and much discussed issues raised by A Tale of Two Cities is the moral phenomenon represented by Sydney Carton and his self-sacrifice.” Her essay, she explains, explores Carton’s “ambivalent attitude to his own affiliation with the rising class of urban intelligentsia.” She maintains that “Dickens’s narrative choices in A Tale of Two Cities offers a representation of this new and increasingly prominent class during the novelist’s own lifetime.” Toker sees this theme as “another ‘golden thread’ that unites the present and the past by projecting later developments into the period when they were only beginning to sprout.”

Next, in a probing essay titled “Sydney Carton Goes to His Death: Five Visualizations of the Famous Ending of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities,” Jordan Bailey shows how the technique of “close reading” can be useful not only in examining a text itself but also in examining visual illustrations of a text. She observes that “probably the most memorable episode in A Tale of Two Cities—and probably one of the most famous episodes in all of English literature—occurs near the very end of the novel. This,” she explains, “is the episode in which Sydney Carton, in a supreme moment of true love and self-sacrifice, goes to his execution at the guillotine” so that Darnay, the husband of the woman Carton secretly loves, can escape that deadly fate. This episode, Bailey reports, “is one of the most-often illustrated scenes of the entire novel. Anyone trying to visualize Dickens’s book—whether in drawings or paintings or in films or on television—knows how significant this scene is and also how important it is to give the scene a memorable visual impact.” Her essay discusses five different “visualizations” of Carton on the way to his death—four printed illustrations and one particular shot from a famous early silent movie.

The picture taken from the silent film helps emphasize that by the first decades of the twentieth century, movies had become one of the most common ways to bring Dickens’s novels to visual life. In 1935, Hollywood released one of the most famous and most respected of all adaptations of his works—a big-budget production directed by Jack Conway and memorably starring Ronald Colman as Carton. McKenna Odom, in an essay titled “The 1935 Film of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: A Survey of Reviews,” reports that all the assessments she summarizes suggest that the 1935 film “is widely considered an especially successful movie, particularly as a version of a renowned ‘literary classic.’ Adapting great books for the cinema,” she comments, “is no easy task, since so many people already know the books and also since viewers often have unusually high expectations of any adaptation.” The Conway film, however, impressed most critics in its own day and has continued to impress them ever since.

For this reason, a second essay is devoted here to the Conway movie: “Two Ways of Looking at A Tale of Two Cities (1935): Historical and Stylistic Analysis of a Classic Hollywood Adaptation.” In this article, Darren Harris-Fain contends that “it is one thing to watch a film, another to see it. Even the most mediocre movie is a complex audiovisual experience, and better films contain an abundance of details easily missed in a cursory viewing. Not every movie,” he continues, “merits our rapt attention, but any viewing can be enriched by applying the cinematic equivalent of close reading. Additionally, watching movies with some understanding of their historical and cultural contexts can also enhance the experience.” A viewer “need not be deeply versed in cinema history to enjoy a film, but knowing its place in that history can give viewers additional insights. A good example of these claims” he notes, “is MGM’s 1935 adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859), his second and final historical novel.”

Critical Readings: II

The 1935 film set the bar so high for movie adaptations of A Tale that it might easily have discouraged later directors from ever trying to do the job again. However, as several more essays show, Dickens’s novel was adapted repeatedly over the next sixty years, both for the big screen and for TV, and each of these later adaptations was successful in its own right. In an essay titled “The 1958 Film of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: A Survey of Reviews,” Robert Evans suggests that this new version, starring Dirk Bogarde as Carton, “was a calculated risk for everyone involved,” especially because “Tale had already been very successfully filmed in 1935, making comparisons and contrasts of the two versions inevitable.” But Evans reports that “if the critics’ reactions are any indication, the 1958 adaptation was genuinely successful in its own right. It won wide praise, was a major advance in Bogarde’s career, and has held up well in the estimation of many later critics. Commentators,” Evans concludes, “have generally welcomed the fact that at least two fine movies were made of Dickens’s classic, and Dickens—himself an inveterate amateur actor and man of the stage—would no doubt be pleased.”

So: two movies made, and two successes achieved. But then, in 1980, came yet another adaptation, this one starring Chris Sarandon in the dual roles of Carton and Darnay. Kelly Snyder, in her essay “The 1980 Television Film of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: A Survey of Reviews,” observes that “Dickens describes the two men as closely resembling each other in physical appearance (if not in personal traits or social standing). Thus, Sarandon’s willingness to play both male ‘leads’ presented an intriguing challenge to the actor—a challenge he was often praised for meeting.” After summarizing and quoting from many mostly positive reviews, Snyder ends with praise from one critic who “listed several adjectives to describe the production: ‘lavish is a good one. So are stupendous and incredible. Magnificent might be the most appropriate.’” Although not all reviewers reacted with this degree of enthusiasm, many were, in fact impressed, as Snyder shows.

Finally, in the last of this volume’s essays on film adaptations of A Tale, Robert Evans surveys critical commentary on yet another well-received production—a 1989 British/French collaborative venture, with James Wilby as Carton. This four-hour miniseries was made to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution. Evans observes that critical response to this adaptation was, again, generally positive. He also notes that, in the decades since 1989, no new film version has appeared. If and when one does appear (he suggests) “viewers may enjoy the process of comparing and contrasting it not only with the earlier filmed versions but with the book itself.” All four of the previous modern films easily lend themselves to this kind of endeavor—an endeavor likely to be especially profitable in classroom discussions.

Critical Readings: III

A final grouping of “critical readings” includes two essays by Joyce Ahn that survey recent analyses of the novel and adaptations of it. These analyses, published between 1990 and 2020, involve many kinds of approaches and thus give readers a sense of the sorts of issues that have most interested recent critics. Ahn’s first essay discusses such matters as the novel’s presentation of the French Revolution and its implications; the political, philosophical, social, and other contexts of the book; explorations of the text’s themes, characterization, and narrative techniques; and examination of some stage and film adaptations. In her second, companion essay, Ahn pays special attention to such matters as stage and film adaptations of the work; comparisons and contrasts between Charles Dickens and Charles Darnay; a particular neo-Marxist reading; a specific feminist interpretation; an essay on naming and counting in the novel; an essay on its treatment of love, language, and identity; the issue of Victorian disharmonies; and essays on such topics as Paris and London; different “ways of seeing”; the concepts of ambiguity and modernity; the concept of “open liminality”; prison homes and domesticity; and, finally, Dickens’s influence on Joseph Conrad’s The Rover. Ahn’s essays, like many of the other essays that survey previous scholarship, are designed to make the present book one of the most comprehensive overviews of “the best that has been thought and said” about one of Dickens’s most famous novels.

Finally, the section of “Critical Readings” closes with a discussion by Nathalie Vanfasse, a prominent scholar of Dickens from continental Europe who offers “A View from France.” In this intriguing commentary, Vanfasse deals with such matters as how and why she, as a French reader, first became attracted to Dickens’s novel; how she and her students have analyzed Dickens’s description of the storming of the Bastille; how she responds to the novel’s visual quality, especially its resemblance to famous prints depicting the French Revolution; and how she understands Dickens’s treatment of French history. In addition, she also considers the novel’s “intercultural” dimensions, the book’s combination of poetics and politics, the ethical and philosophical questions it raises; and the ways the book has enriched her life and the lives of her students. All in all, this interview with Vanfasse is an excellent bookend to the interview with Glancy that opened this volume.

Resources

Like all volumes in the Critical Insights series, this one closes with a section of useful resources, including a chronology of the author’s life; a listing of the author’s major works; and a bibliography of major critical commentary. The book then concludes with a biography of the editor; biographies of the contributors; and a comprehensive index.