A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Penguin) - Charles Dickens [188]
Phrenology eventually was disputed by scientists, but both psycho-physiologists (as those who studied mind-brain phenomenon were known at the time) and popular writers of self-help manuals agreed about the power of beliefs, mental associations, and habits to shape a person’s character. In A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton is a cynic about human nature and, though brilliant, dissolute and self-destructive. His last, heroic (yet utterly self-destructive) act is associated with his romantic feelings for Lucie Manette, which bring out his ideal nature. Dickens also creates a fascinating representation of psychology in Dr. Manette’s reaction to his long and solitary imprisonment, that is, the physical activity of shoe making, which is a solace to his fears of solitary confinement and also how he safely channels his anger. Alone after his daughter weds the nephew of the man who had Manette imprisoned, the doctor loses his ability to repress his associations between his new son-in-law and his former prison cell, and he slips into an almost catatonic state, just like the one in which Mr. Lorie finds him after his release from the Bastille. In this state of mind, Manette reverts to the activity that provided an outlet to him while in prison: he begins making shoes. In chapter 19, when Mr. Lorry questions his friend about the causes of the relapse, Dr. Manette suggests that it was sparked by a “strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think.” The idea of destroying the bench and the tools causes Manette to feel “a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.” His poignant description highlights the feelings of vulnerability, as well, perhaps, as a repressed desire for revenge, that remains deeply embedded in his mind, even after his recovery.
Dickens and Melodrama
Dickens championed theatrical entertainment as a positive contribution to the quality of life, especially for working people, who had to strive to merely survive. He referred to “an innate love . . . for dramatic entertainment” (“The Amusements of the People,” Selected Journalism 499). As he explains in an essay for Household Words called “Lying Awake,” he believes the popular taste for the miraculous events of the theater is correlated to the precariousness of working people’s lives: “This particular public have inherently a great pleasure in the contemplation of physical difficulties overcome; mainly, as I take it, because the lives of a large majority of them are exceedingly monotonous and real, and further, are a struggle against continual difficulties, and further still, because anything in the form of accidental injury, or any kind of illness or disability is so very serious in their own sphere” (Selected Journalism 28). (It is worth pointing out that this was an era before any type of social benefits or social safety networks, such as unemployment or disability insurance.)
Originally referring to a drama in which music alternated with the actors’ dialogue, melodrama was an enormously popular dramatic form in the nineteenth century, and also was incorporated into various kinds of sensational fiction. Dickens’s novels exhibit many of the miraculous events that characterize melodrama. A Tale of Two Cities, for example, employs reversals of