Charles Darnay visits Mr. Lorry at Tellson's to try to dissuade him from traveling to Paris on business. Darnay grows angry when he hears men of Monseigneur's class and Mr. Stryver discussing how they will punish the peasants when the revolution is over. He overhears another Tellson's clerk asking Mr. Lorry if he has found the man to whom to give a letter addressed to the Marquis St.
The address is shown around, and the other French noblemen admit that they don't know him personally but do know that he supported the revolution and parceled out his land among his peasants. Darnay claims to know the man and promises to deliver the letter to him.
He opens it, and it is a plea for help from Monsieur Gabelle, who has been imprisoned after all. Darnay feels justified in having renounced his title, but he worries that he did not settle affairs in the manner that he should have, and he resolves to go to Paris. He assumes that his gesture of handing over his title will make him welcomed by the revolutionaries. He conveys a verbal message from the recipient of the letter himself, though Mr.
Lorry does not know that to Mr. Lorry, saying simply that he will come and is leaving immediately. After writing two letters-one to Lucie and another to the Doctor-he leaves for Paris in the middle of the night, without informing either of them in person. Chapter 20 reinforces the idea that Lucie is a moral heroine. She embodies the virtue which is perhaps most associated with Christianity, mercy.
She has the Christ-like ability to forgive those who have sinned, and Carton feels this mercy as a sort of redemption. Her beauty, which once seemed her primary characteristic, is in reality secondary to and caused by her virtue.
Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, "She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours.
The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves.
Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle.
The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming.
The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes.
Chapter 21 also narrates one of the most recognizable events of the French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille. The Bastille was the major prison in Paris, the most concrete symbol of the ancien regime. The attack on it was seen as heroic, especially because it preceded the reign of terror, and it is still celebrated as liberational in modern France.
In recounting this historical event, Dickens focuses on the awesome power of the mob rather than on its intent, heroic or not. He describes the mob as an uncontrolled ocean producing a tidal wave. Finally, the water from the fountains has been corrupted into a human sea, the surging crowd that come to cleanse the Bastille.
As Saint Antoine awakes, the people do not seem like a community of humans but rather a natural force, being a "forest of naked arms" and emitting a dull roar. Meanwhile, by going into the turbulent climate of revolutionary France, Darnay is effectively burying himself alive.
Sardanapalus's luxury Sardanapalus also known as Assurbanipal was an Assyrian king renowned for his lavish lifestyle. Prison of the Abbaye a prison in Paris that held many aristocrats during the French Revolution.
Previous Chapter Next Chapter 1. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title. Are you sure you want to remove bookConfirmation and any corresponding bookmarks? My Preferences My Reading List. Adam Bede has been added to your Reading List! Lorry receives an urgent letter, addressed to the Marquis St. Lorry laments the extreme difficulty of locating the Marquis, who has abandoned the estate willed to him by his murdered uncle.
Darnay, careful to let no one suspect that he is in fact the missing Marquis, says that the Marquis is an acquaintance of his. He takes the letter, assuring Lorry that he will see it safely delivered. Gabelle begs the new Marquis to return to France and save him. Dissatisfied with the outcome of that venture, Dickens set out to craft a novel that combined the panorama of history with his typical cast of exaggerated characters. Critical opinion differs on whether he achieved a successful balance.
Most critics agree that A Tale of Two Cities somewhat sacrifices its characters to its historical scope. SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook.
Why is Charles Darnay acquitted at his English trial?
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