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:
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(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.
It took me a while to really understand what Dickens was trying to say. I have hear people quote the opening several times, but at those moments I didn't know where they were quoting it from or how it related to the story.
ReplyDeleteDickens sarcasm is plain and really enjoyable- pg 7 " she entertained herself ..human achievements as sentencing youth to have his hands cut off.."- What!!
Questions.
- Do you think it is easier to understand the references that Dickens makes if we knew more about the history of Britain and France during this period? Why the comparison?
As with anything written a long time ago, it's easier to understand the references if you know the time period; here we have the added layer of Dickens himself writing historical fiction. Still, I think people reading this when it was written (especially those living in Britain) were likely to have been more familiar with that history than the average American in 2014.
DeleteThe comparison would have made a lot of sense, as England and France spent centuries at war with each other (continuing into Dickens' lifetime.) So, in the way that I can't remember a time when the US and Iraq were on very good terms (although war hasn't been constant) people reading this book when it was written were very familiar with the antagonism between England and France.