I read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I’m finally ready to return it to Mrs. Healey’s personal library but maybe not right away hehe (Thanks Mrs. Healey!). What caught my eye about it on the bookshelf was that it looked old and kind of fancy because it had gold on it. I had heard about the novel before but had never read anything by Charles Dickens before. I decided that I needed to read more classics which I do not always look forward to reading because of the language. In older literature, I sometimes find them harder to understand because of the dialect. The way people spoke was different then how we speak now and can confuse me sometimes because I do not always know what the characters are referring to. So when I set out to read a Tale of Two Cities, I was prepared to not understand it. This was not the case and I was happily surprised. I really enjoyed reading the novel because it wasn’t an easy read but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It kind of reminded me of this other book I had read called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel. I am not quite sure why but it had a similar way of talking for me. It kind of had a humorous side to it but not quite. I am not really sure how to explain it (sorry), only that I really enjoyed it.
I enjoyed a lot of the characters. I really loved quite a few of them like Mr. Lorry. A lot of the plot also seemed very modern to me. The novel was written in 1859, but it seemed to me that it had a lot of storylines that could happen in modern life. One plot twist that I thought was kind of modern was that Lucie did not know that her father was alive. Her mother had told her that he was dead and I felt like that could happen in modern times as well. I just thought it was unusual because I had this picture in my head that back then everyone tried to adhere to the social rules and that this was against the social aspects of the time.
The female characters of the book made me think. There were a lot of things that I did not think were realistic with some of the characters, especially Lucie. Lucie is nice to everyone and everyone loves and worships her. Lucie was good all the time and wasn’t a very dynamic character. I found her unrealistic and frankly, kind of boring. I thought that she was a good person but I started to get annoyed with Lucie because she was too stereotypical. She was what everyone thought a woman should be, and to me it just wasn’t realistic. I also thought the relationship between Lucie and her father, Doctor Manette, was unusual. Right when she met him, she was hugging him. I don’t know if it is just me but I feel like I would need more time to feel comfortable around my newly discovered father after so many years. Although I still kind of love Lucie because I really love all the characters even Madame Defrage. Although Madame Defrage is an antagonist, I like that she is a strong women. When she first appears in the novel, my first thought was that she was kind of stoic and I admired it. She is only the antagonist because circumstances made her become that. I also loved Miss Pross. Miss Pross was a humorous character. When she first appeared, I found myself smiling. She was also extremely protective and maternal of Lucie. Lucie’s mother died and she did not have a motherly figure in her life. Miss Pross never had children. I did not find it surprising that she would become so maternal to Lucie because it made sense. Although, that is also a little stereotypical.
By far, my favorite character is Sydney Carton. I have always been one to cheer for the underdog, and I was rooting for him. I have read another book with a love triangle and for some reason I rooted for the other guy. This happened in A Tale of Two Cities as well. I related to Carton. I felt he was just misunderstood. When the reader first meets him, he appears mean in an intelligent, sarcastic, and dark way. As the novel continues, Carton reveals more about himself. It becomes obvious to the reader that is just his persona. I mean he is like that but he is also more than that. I felt bad for him because he was an alcoholic and had all these problems but he really was a good guy. He sacrifices himself because he wants Lucie to be happy. Carton was my favorite character because he was the underdog, and the misunderstood hero.
I really enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities. I want to read other novels by Charles Dickens because I really liked his writing style. I also related to his characters because I found at least one thing about each character that made me like them. Even Marquis, Darnay’s uncle, because although he is a terrible, terrible person, without him, the story would be missing crucial plots. I mostly focused on characters in this blog but I also thought that there were a lot of themes in the novel as well. I guess that will have to be in another blog post….
