A Tale of Two Cities (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [212]
5 (p. 271) Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day: This is a reference to the Bible, Genesis 1:5—“And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day” (KJV)—as well as an allusion to the revolutionaries’ ambition to restart history, dating from their declaration of a French Republic.
6 (p. 271) the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey: After the execution of the king, his queen, Marie-Antoinette, remained in prison until October 16, 1793, when she was finally brought to the guillotine.
7 (p. 271) law of the Suspected: Defining as “suspect” all those deemed suspicious, the Law of Suspects inaugurated a form of paranoid totalitarian state well known in the twentieth century (see the Introduction). It was passed by the Revolutionary Convention on September 17, 1793, and resulted in the introduction of round-the-clock hearings at the Tribunal, and a tripling in both the prison population and the number of executions.
8 (p. 272) La Guillotine . . . was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied: The French Revolution was deeply anticlerical in ideology, methods, and symbols. The divorce between church and state in France remains absolute.
9 (p. 272) Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes: The Girondins, the more moderate party that grew out of the Revolution, wished the king to be spared. They paid for their concern for Louis’s head with their own on October 31, 1793, when the radical Jacobins assumed full control of the state. One Girondin had committed suicide before his arrest but was beheaded anyway.
10 (p. 272) The name of the strong man of Old Scripture: “Jack Ketch” became the proverbial name for all English hangmen following the exploits of the eponymous executioner of the Bloody Assizes in 1686, but the French went one better, passing the office down through one family, called San son, for almost two hundred years. Dickens notes the similarity of San son’s name to the Old Testament biblical hero Samson, known for his prodigious strength (see Judges 13-16).
11 (p. 272) the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night: The reference to the violent suppression of loyalists in Lyons is couched in the language of the Bible, Psalm 126:4: “Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south” (KJV).
Chapter 5: The Wood-sawyer
1 (p. 273) One year and three months: Dickens places Darnay’s arrest at the beginning of September 1792. Therefore, the action has now shifted to November 1793, during the Reign of Terror.
2 (p. 277) This was the Carmagnole: Carmagnole describes both a French revolutionary song and dance, and the outfit (short jacket, tricolor waistcoat, long trousers) of those lower-class Parisians most likely to perform it.
3 (p. 278) the Conciergerie: The main prison adjoining the Palais de Justice, the Conciergerie was where the Revolutionary Tribunal heard cases against those charged with capital offenses against the state. Its most famous inmate was Marie-Antoinette, who displayed legendary grace and sang-froid for the term of her incarceration.
Chapter 6: Triumph
1 (p. 279) The dread Tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor: The Revolutionary Tribunal, principal judicial organ of the Reign of Terror, was presided over by Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville. In accordance with the dark logic of the Terror, he ultimately went to the guillotine himself in May 1795.
2 (p. 283) The first of them told him so, with the customary prison sign of Death—a raised finger: The reference is probably to one of the most celebrated victims of the Terror, the French revolutionary Madame