Novelist Charles Dickens, author of A Tale of Two Cities. Chronicles the events of the French Revolution through the lens of a well-to-do middle class English family. As the revolution shifts from being a far away. And almost abstract event to becoming an intimate part of the main characters’ lives. Dickens reveals to his readers a vicious cycle of violence that begins. At the upper class and invariably affects the lower class. Using both individuals and collective groups of people to personify this cycle. To communicate this revelation, he adopts a Marxist agenda to critique classism while simultaneously. Using the actions and intentions of his main characters to challenge the Marxist belief that all human acts are driven solely by the desire for socioeconomic power.
From the start of the novel, Dickens depicts the desperation and poverty of the lower class and the ruthlessness of the upper class. He describes a scene in which spilled wine on the street draws a mass of people to the front of a wine shop to literally drink it from the ground and lick it off the now broken bottles it was carried in. Shortly thereafter, he shares two accounts of members of the upper class. The first is Monseigneur, shown flaunting his wealth and arrogantly greeting his ‘worshippers’. The second is a haughty man that is essentially characterized by his horrible actions. Monsieur the Marquis; he runs over and kills a child with his carriage, and unphased by the accident, tosses a gold coin at the weeping and grieving father. By introducing these characters. And giving these accounts in Book 1 of his novel, Dickens establishes his adopted Marxist agenda.
Due to the ruthlessness and apathy that Monsieur the Marquis displays at the beginning of the novel, it does not seem so unbelievable when the reader later finds out that he and his brother, members of the Evremonde family, (and the uncle and father of Charles Damay, respectively.) were responsible for the rape and death of a peasant, the stabbing and death of her brother, and the death of her father. Of the terrorized peasant family, the only survivor was a sister, who we later find out is Madame Defarge. Now a vengeful and sinister force among the violent masses that are revolting, she is a prime example of how violence at the hands of the upper class is bound to instill in the lower class a desire for revenge and only keep the cycle of violence going. Classism, and more specifically, the belief in a classist society that whether one is of the upper or lower class determines their value as a human being, is essentially criticized by Dickens, as it allows the upper class to commit these horrors that inevitably cause the lower class to retaliate with horror as well. Just as Dickens declared, “sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind” (p367); that is, societal violence and oppression is an ongoing positive feedback loop fed by classism.
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While the French Revolution unfolds in A Tale of Two Cities, the reader is constantly reminded that amidst the struggle for power between the upper and lower classes of France, there is a middle class caught in between, and although it is argued in Marxism that all human actions are for the purpose of attaining socio economic power, the main characters of the novel-members of the middle class- prove otherwise. No better example of this phenomenon can be observed in anyone but Sydney Carton. In love with Lucie, Carton sacrifices himself so that her husband, Darnay, can live. He helps the family flee the city before they are falsely accused of treason by Madame Defarge and sentenced to death, and in his last moments, finds peace in knowing he lived in order to die for Lucie’s happiness. His actions were driven by altruistic love, his peace fed by the knowledge that he will “hold a sanctuary in [Lucie and Darnay’s] hearts” (p372).
In conclusion, Dickens provides an overarching critique of classism, and through characters that are not perpetrators of classist-driven violence, debunks the Marxist belief in human nature’s inclination towards socioeconomic power.
