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A Very Brief Analysis On Dickens's Opinions On The French Revolution

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Charles Dickens explores both sides of the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities. [1] He portrays the aristocracy as abusive landowners who do not care about the common people. [2] However, he also views the revolutionaries and mobs as crazed and violent. [3] Dickens seems to have sympathy for the oppressed peasants but distaste for both the aristocracy and the mobs, finding both sides capable of great evil.

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A Very Brief Analysis On Dickens's Opinions On The French Revolution

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Matthew
42 views4 pages
Charles Dickens explores both sides of the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities. [1] He portrays the aristocracy as abusive landowners who do not care about the common people. [2] However, he also views the revolutionaries and mobs as crazed and violent. [3] Dickens seems to have sympathy for the oppressed peasants but distaste for both the aristocracy and the mobs, finding both sides capable of great evil.

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Charles Dickens explores both sides of the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities. [1] He portrays the aristocracy as abusive landowners who do not care about the common people. [2] However, he also views the revolutionaries and mobs as crazed and violent. [3] Dickens seems to have sympathy for the oppressed peasants but distaste for both the aristocracy and the mobs, finding both sides capable of great evil.

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42 views4 pages

A Very Brief Analysis On Dickens's Opinions On The French Revolution

Uploaded by

Matthew
Charles Dickens explores both sides of the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities. [1] He portrays the aristocracy as abusive landowners who do not care about the common people. [2] However, he also views the revolutionaries and mobs as crazed and violent. [3] Dickens seems to have sympathy for the oppressed peasants but distaste for both the aristocracy and the mobs, finding both sides capable of great evil.

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M.

Butler

December 2021

Mrs. Spence

British Literature

A Very Brief Analysis on Dickens’s Opinions on the French Revolution

In Charles Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities he chooses to spend a great deal of time

exploring the morality of each side of the French Revolution’s conflicting factions. On one hand

he clearly shows the people to be greatly oppressed by the French aristocracy but he also

makes his distaste for the idea of mobs and their mentality clearly known. It is very unclear

which side he would support more and it seems that throughout the novel he is not attempting

to glorify one side or the other, but rather illustrating the horror of France at the time. From the

beginning of the story to the end, he has very little good to say about the revolutionaries or the

aristocrats and is intensely critical of both sides and seeks to express the horrors that he has

heard of over the course of his life.

To begin, Dickens firmly paints the aristocrats of France as abusive landowners that only

exist to take advantage of the working-class and to remain in power. They are callous and do

not care about the plights of their people and are only concerned with politicking and gaining

power. This is most clearly seen when the Marquis St. Evremonde kills a man’s son under his

carriage and “repays” the father with a coin. His attitude is made explicitly clear when he says “I

would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which
rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed

under the wheels.”1 Furthermore, the Evremondes have committed many more atrocities like

raping a woman after killing her family2 showing their lack of regard to the people that they rule

over.

On the other hand, Dickens has shown his distaste for the mob and their irrationality as

well. Even before we reach the revolution Dickens displays the mob for what he thinks it is, a

bloodthirsty, uncontrollable, and malevolent force that few will be safe from. He evinces this in

Chapters two and three of book two with the trial of Sydney Carton where he regards the

bloodthirsty English mob with the same contempt that he later applies to the French

revolutionaries. In that vein, the French revolutionaries are described with a great deal of what

could be described as fear; they are depicted as crazed, senseless, violence-mongering, and live

to take revenge on the aristocrats that wounded them so deeply. Dickens says this on the

subject: “. . . the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;—eyes which any unbrutalised

beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.” 3

In Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities it is clear that the author does not look upon any side

more favorably than the other based simply on portrayal. It is clear Dickens has sympathy for

the peasants of France during this period for he would not show the pure natures of the

1
A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens, Book 2 Chapter 7
2
Seen in Book 3 Chapter 10
3
Book 3 Chapter 2
starving peasants and the harsh actions of the aristocrats in such vivid detail. However, his

distaste and fear of the mob is infinitely obvious and he believes them to be committing acts of

evil rather than justice. Therefore, it seems that Dickens believed both parties to be evils of

great magnitude and based on this text alone it is difficult to judge which one Dickens favored.
Works Cited:

Dickens, Charles. “A Tale of Two Cities.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tale of Two
Cities, by Charles Dickens, Project Gutenberg, 1 Dec. 2021,
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/98/pg98-images.html#link2H_4_0043.

Note on Citation: I would’ve used my paper copy but I misplaced it recently and am
currently unable to find it.

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