- 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.")
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