Ch. 4: Congratulatory (p. 81-88)

Thoughts, Vocab, Explanations: 

• Sometimes it's hard to shake the feeling that Dickens is a bit of a misanthropist: "From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off..." (81).
• Is this the first use of Lucie's first name?  I remembered it but hadn't been using it because I thought maybe I was making it up.  Miss Manette shall henceforth be Lucie.
  
   
• I guess we are more or less in the position of Mr. Darnay here; we are loosely aligned with Lucie and her family, and we don't know what the heck Carton's deal is.  He calls out Mr. Lorry for avoiding Mr. Darnay's company while Mr. Darnay is accused (because Mr. Lorry is a man of business and it would have looked bad for them to be seen together--remember that Mr. Carton goes and speaks to Mr. Darnay before the verdict is returned, though, and here he insists that he has no business.)  He smashes a glass when Mr. Darnay toasts (and then orders another glass: why would you serve him, innkeeper?)  Finally he point-blank asks Mr. Darnay, "Do you think I particularly like you?" (86).  I confess to being a little frustrated at his antics, but I'm sure Dickens has something up his sleeve. 

Takeaways: 

Carton is a strange guy; I think either Carton or Darnay (or both?) have some connection to Lucie's father's imprisonment (what with that dark look that comes over Mr. Manette) and at the moment, we don't know much more.

Ch. 3: A Disappointment (p. 67-81)

Thoughts, Vocab, Explanations: 

•  So the gist of these extremely long-winded opening remarks is that Mr. Darnay is accused of giving France information about the plans of the British military when those two countries were at war (specifically, it sounds like, when the French came to the aid of the Americans during the American Revolutionary War.)  He is accused by some high-and-mighty Englishman and evidence was produced against him by his own servant (although that evidence does not seem to be in Mr. Darnay's handwriting.)

• I have a hunch that that opening speech was precisely when I decided I didn't like this book in high school.   In fact, Dickens often uses the technique of making characters we're ultimately meant to dislike incredibly long-winded, but here it's got the extra layers of history and war and the courtroom and it's harder to see it as the satire it's intended to be.

• "Gentleman" is a profession.  Humph.
  
• "Ever kicked downstairs?  Decidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell down-stairs of his own accord." (p. 69)  You can see the good old Dickensian sense of humor in the responses to this cross-examination, as Mr. Darnay's lawyer just obliterates the "patriot" who accused Mr. Darney of treason.

• Aha!  Now we start to learn about the other two people in the coach from wayyyyy back at the beginning of the book!  Remember, they were all wrapped up like mummies and each suspected the other of being a robber or murderer or something?
•  Is it weird that I can't help liking Carton better than his fancier, better-groomed double?  Carton's wig is half off, he's slouching around, and he's so obnoxious: "Yes I could.  I will, if you ask it" is the jerkiest possible response to "Could you tell so-and-so something" but it kind of makes me love him (80).

Takeaways: 

Despite everyone's assumptions going in, Mr. Darnay is acquitted and will live to flirt with Ms. Manette and tell dumb jokes about George Washington another day!

Ch. 2: A Sight (p. 61-67)

Thoughts, Vocab, Explanations:

•  "the Old Bailey" (p. 61)--a large criminal court in London

• "quartering" (p. 62)--a horrific sentence once given for certain crimes (like treason) which took its name from the fact that the body of the criminal was cut into four quarters.  (That followed hanging, evisceration, and decapitation.)

Takeaways:

So wait--we're back with (presumably) the Manette's, who are here to testify against this guy they seem to feel sorry for?  What's going on?

Ch. 1: Five Years Later (p. 55-61)

Thoughts, Vocab, Explanations:

•  Hmm, so I had been picturing Tellson's as Gringott's, minus the goblins.  Apparently it's more like Harry's closet under the stairs: small, dark, and full of something extremely valuable.

• Ooh, social commentary: "Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's.  In this respect, the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable" (55).  In other words, just as anyone who suggested that Tellson's band should ditch its dirty, tiny building for a newer, nicer one would find himself out on the streets, anyone who tried to get unjust old laws to change would find himself on the wrong side of the government.  The people in power value things that are old simply because they are old, even if they are no good, and they do not welcome even the suggestion of change.  (This is one of the major patterns that emerges in any study of history: if you're in charge, you tend to want to keep things in whatever order they were that allowed you to become powerful.)

• This is a grim way of looking at businesses: in times when many crimes were punished with death, any business that had been around long enough to have many crimes committed against it would be (by bringing charges) at least partially responsible for the deaths of quite a few people (and, I suppose, if its actions brought people into dire straits that caused them to commit crimes, then it would be responsible for those as well?) 
   
• This is why I read Dickens: "When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old.  They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mold upon him"  (57).

• Also this: "His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Houndsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry" (57).  Dickens might have said "His name was Jerry Cruncher" but instead we get this lovely sentence that makes the familiar (the concept of infant baptism) strange, and also lets us know that Jerry is from Houndsditch, which I guess I really didn't need the note to understand is not a lovely place.  (The note to my edition confirms that, yes, historically, Houndsditch was a dumping-ground for canine corpses.) 

• "Anno Domini" (p. 57)--Latin for "in the year of our lord"; more commonly stated today as "AD" (a method of labeling years before and after Christ.  Sometimes changed to "CE" for "common era" in order to avoid religious connotations.)

• The Cruncher household: a thing of beauty.  Father, mother, and son living together in two small rooms; Father and son going off each day to work as odd-job men at the bank, and mother trying to keep the place clean and say her prayers, which efforts are deeply resented by the other two, it seems.  And then the mysteries of Cruncher, Sr.: how do his boots get so muddy at night, and how do his fingers get so rusty?  Jerry's secrets get curiouser and curiouser--he'd be in a bad way if people started being recalled to life (remember Jerry from early on?) and he's covered in all sorts of mysterious grime...this can't end well.

Takeaways: 

Jerry's back!  And he works (sort of) for Tellson's.  Hmm...

Ch. 6: The Shoemaker (p. 41-52)

Thoughts, Vocab, Explanations: 

•  provender (p. 50)--food

• sagacity (p. 50)--wisdom

Takeaways: 

I had a strange experience reading this chapter; a lot of the exchange between Miss Manette and her father felt like it should be very melodramatic (her words to him are more or less in verse--not at all how people really speak) but at the same time I found myself really moved.  (Hence the lack of my usual chatter above.)  I think that might have to do with how visual Dickens is here--I could picture Monsieur Manette, skin and clothes aged to the same yellow hue, hunched over his workbench.  I could picture his daughter slowly moving toward him, and the expression their two faces shared.  I suppose everything in Dickens is heightened--the names, the characterization, the dialogue--but somehow it's easier to suspend disbelief for comedy than for tragedy.  (I have a feeling the audiences of the time would have found this easier to roll with; today, "melodrama" is used as an insult, but it was an extremely popular genre for a long time.  These days, we usually mix in a fair amount of sex and violence, and often some deliberate camp, and call it "soapy.")

Ch. 5: The Wine-shop (p. 31-41)

Thoughts, Vocab, Explanations: 

• Well, this opening may be a bit on the nose, but sure, I take your point, Dickens: we're in France; the people of France love wine; the streets of France will soon run red not with wine but with blood.  (Special thanks to the dude who actually writes "BLOOD" on the wall in red wine.  We got it.)
  
• Then we get what feels like classic Dickens--what people are talking about when they describe something as Dickensian, a lot of the time.  (Sometimes they mean charming British-looking winter scenes, like the little ceramic village my Grandma puts out at Christmas.  But a lot of the time they're describing this kind of abject poverty, streets full of people who think Oliver Twist is too well-fed even without getting that second bowl of gruel he wanted.)  The people of France are in a bad way, and the wealthy--the "birds, fine of song and feather"--aren't paying any attention to the state of the poor (the "scarecrows".)

• Madame Defarge and her knitting: keep an eye on her.
  
•  All this "Jacques" business goes beyond Monsieur Defarge's name; it is also a nickname for French peasants.   You're going to want to look for any kind of class signifiers, because class was at the heart of the looming French Revolution.

Takeaways:  

It's hard to tell where Monsieur Defarge stands with regard to Monsieur Manette.  On the one hand, he is putting him up, and he seems to care about him--but on the other hand, it's a strange arrangement.

Ch. 4: The Preparation (p. 20-31)

Thoughts, Vocab, Explanations: 

• "packet" (p. 20)--small boat used for transporting mail (and people, much like the mail coach on which Lorry has traveled to Dover)
• "piscatory" (p. 23)--fishy!  (well: having to do with fishing, or fishermen.  But here it's a great way to say that the town smells strongly of fish.)

• Dover is, if you were wondering, on the English coast just across the Channel from France.

 

•  "filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time" (p. 27)--the notes to this edition inform me that this refers to "lettres de cachet"--essentially, prison sentences that wealthy French nobles could buy for their enemies.  So what Lorry is saying is that Miss Manette's father did not die, but was thrown into prison with no trial or any kind of due process; basically, he disappeared.
  
  
• Wow, Jarvis is not great with people or emotions.  He wasn't far from the truth when he described himself as a machine.  "So, your dad you thought was dead your whole life?  Turns out maybe he was just in prison?  Why are you acting so weird do something normal like say the times tables I'm freaking out!"
  
• What a lovely study in contrast: Mr. Lorry's timid brown machine and the woman in red--apparently Miss Manette's servant or nurse--all physicality and life and hollering.  I wish she was planning to stick around, but it's hard to argue with her logic about why she was set down on an island.

Takeaways: 

BOMBSHELL. "Recalled to life" and "buried alive" referred to being freed from a (probably unjust) 18-year prison sentence, and for Miss Manette, this is a great shock as she was raised to believe that her father was dead.  (I'm curious about her life between the time Mr. Lorry brought her over from France to England and now; I'm also skeptical that she has any French accent at all if she moved to England at age two.)

Ch. 3: The Night Shadows (p. 16-20)

Thoughts, Vocab, and Explanations

• Wow, this is a grim first paragraph: a meditation on death and the essential unknowability of other people.  I know I just said Jerry was a mystery, but I wasn't thinking about him like this.
• And then we get this charmingly whimsical description of Jerry's hair: "It was so like smith's work [meaning iron], so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over."  (p. 17)

• This chapter is full of what appear to be visions or dreams--Jerry sees "shapes...such as arose out of the message" (17) (zombies?  ghosts?  whatever it was that he alluded to earlier?) and then the passengers in the mail coach are all seeing whatever fills their heads--in the case of Mr. Lorry, this is a white-haired middle-aged guy who has been "buried alive for eighteen years!"  (20) Which, obviously, can't be literally true, so we read on to see what the heck he means.

Takeaways
  
It seems clear from the outset that, while you can still see glimmers of Dickensian humor, this is a lot darker than Great Expectations.  Still, I have to say: good job making me so curious about what anyone is talking about, ever.  I do want to read on.

Ch. 2: The Mail (p. 9-16)

Thoughts, Vocab, and Explanations:

• Shooter's Hill: sounds like a lovely neighborhood, no?
   
• I am super glad that long-distance transportation no longer requires people to get out and walk uphill in the mud next to the thing they paid to ride in.  (Actually: I feel like that happened to my friend once on an Amtrak train?  But usually.)  I do love the picture Dickens paints here, though: "the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath." (9) Basically the horses pulled a "don't make me turn this carriage around" and then everyone had to get out and walk.  (I think it's the word "mutinous" that I love in that sentence; it personifies the horses in a funny and surprising way.)
   
• Oh right: we're meant to focus on this jumpy passenger, not the horses.  (Man, it has been too long since I read Black Beauty.) 
  
• Does Dickens use creepy mist at the beginning of all his novels?  I remember next to nothing about Hard Times but there's definitely creepy mist in Great Expectations, too.

• Oh good: these people are all wrapped up so that each of them could be absolutely anyone.  That's a useful way to set things up for later.  (You should know that this readalong is unusual in that the last time I read this book was when I was in 10th grade--and I only kind of read it--so I really only have the sketchiest knowledge of the plot.  Therefore my predictions and questions here are going to be for real.)
  
• "substratum" (p. 11)--a layer beneath something, usually used to describe rock or dirt under the ground (but here used to describe the cutlasses upon which several guns are resting in the guard's substantial traveling arsenal.  Only Dickens.)
  
• Ok, the stage is pretty well set here: everyone thinks everyone else is probably a highwayman.  So when a strange horse comes galloping up out of the dark, no one is happy about it.  The passengers very much want to get in--but our guy hangs in the doorway which keeps everyone else out.  The guard is serious about all that weaponry (and sassy, to boot: "'I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry', growled the guard to himself.  'He's hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.'" (14) Also all the cracks about what happens if he makes a mistake.  (You die.))

• Jarvis?
  
•  Love how we're in the same position as the characters here: "Recalled to life?  What the heck does that mean?"  (Actually, no, I don't love it, it drives me nuts!  And makes me want to buy the next installment--pretty sneaky, Dickens.  Pretty sneaky.)

• While all this is going on, the other passengers have gotten into the coach, hidden their valuables, and pretended to be asleep.  You know, just in case.

• Joe and Tom are my favorites already and I have to say, I'm pretty bummed that Dickens has made it so clear that this novel is not about them.
  
• Also, what is Jerry hiding? "You'd be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!" (16)
  

Takeaways:  Traveling by mail coach was terrifying and sometimes muddy; some guy named Jarvis is the first important character we've met; Jarvis is to wait for a girl (Mam'selle, short for Mademoiselle, meaning an unmarried woman) at Dover; Jarvis speaks in code.  Also, Dickens writes great supporting characters but I guess the whole English-speaking world already knew that.

Ch. 1: The Period (p. 7-9)

All page numbers are from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition from 2004, with Introduction and Notes by Gillen D'Arcy Wood.

Thoughts, Vocab, and Explanations: 

• Not technically the first chapter, but: this preface is bizarre.  "I have so far verified what is done and suffered in these pages, as that I have certainly done and suffered it all myself"???  This is an alarming thing for a writer to say.   I get empathizing with your characters, but a lot goes down in this book.  I worry a little for our friend Charles.  And what does he mean that his depiction of pre-Revolutionary France and the Revolution are made "on the faith of the most trustworthy witnesses"?  Other than Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History, I wonder where Dickens got his information.  By the 1850s, there can't have been a ton of people left who were involved in the Revolution (or even lived through it--life spans weren't crazy short then but there were a lot of ways to die.  And I imagine that "being alive in France during the Revolustion" was a popular cause of death among potential witnesses.

• This is a great opening paragraph--it's one of those pieces of writing that is so famous we don't stop to think about it very often, but the big point Dickens is making under those famous lines is: yeah, ok, everything was terrible and also amazing, and really everything was basically as it is now.  True when Dickens wrote it, true enough now.  People in power continue to operate under the assumption (and hope) that things will always stay the same, while apocalyptic prophets continue to capture the public imagination (you guys, I read so much student writing about 2012 in my first few years of teaching.)  Same old, same old.
   
• "a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history" (p. 8)--the guillotine.  The main killing device of the French Revolution.  One of these:
  

  

  Source

  
  

 (The triangle bit on top is a blade; it falls down on the neck that's waiting in the oval area between those two pieces of wood, and chops your head off.  Your head tips into the basket conveniently positioned there to catch it.  Just so you know what we're dealing with here.)

• Ok, I know this laundry list of crimes is meant to build in intensity and shock value, but "Families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterer's warehouses for security"  is the one that stopped me cold.  You can't leave your furniture alone in your house overnight???  That feels so bizarre.  I kind of have to imagine this was a racket perpetrated by the upholsterers with warehouses.  (If so: genius!)  But yes, also, murders and highway robbery and rioting in the prisons, etc, etc.  Worst of times.  Got it.

Takeaway: Conditions were rough in France and Britain; the trees that would become guillotines were already growing.  Ominous.