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A Tale of Two Cities and the French Revolution Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, portrayed the French Revolution unfairly, and not entirely completely. I don t think that Dickens goal in writing A Tale of Two Cities was to portray the stability of England as a nation, but that was the main message I derived from the film. Also, some of the causes of the revolution seemed to fade into the background, leaving an incomplete picture of the French people s suffering. Dickens does not do justice to the Revolution, as he portrays it as mostly meaningless violence and bitter revenge. In reality, the Revolution started a chain of events that would change France for the better. Though it may have taken some years for this to be fully realized, when Dickens wrote the novel, he should have known that the revolution s ends somehow justified the means.
In my view, Dickens made it look as though no matter what the ends, the means could not be justified. The Terror was a very violent period, and it is true that a lot of the violence could have been completely avoided. I think that Dickens trivializes the struggle that the Third Estate went through before they ever resorted to violence. England, in comparison, is portrayed as the stable nation, a place where all are welcome, and none are judged. This was as true for England at that time as it was for France. I think that this fact unfairly biases the viewer, or reader, of A Tale of Two Cities.
England had problems of it s own at the time, but Dickens chose to gloss over that part of the story. In Dickens present, England was at a tender time. Some feared that revolution was coming, and Dickens only weapon against that was his fiction. In order to make the English realize that revolution was unnecessary, the French were made out to be savages and brutes. Their violence was made to look excessive and meaningless. By comparison, the British in A Tale were far more sensible and civilized.
This, I think, was a device to help avert revolution in Dickens time. There was justice in the violence that was committed in the name of the revolution. Dickens, and others of his time, were afraid of the consequences of a second great revolution rocking Europe. Dickens portrayed a few causes of the revolution. The monarchy spent extravagant amounts of money on improving the castles and courts; the nobility was exempt from taxes; the Third Estate was left to bear all the expense. The bourgeois was angry, and the peasants were starving.
During the pre-Revolutionary period, the Second Estate also became unhappy with the monarchy. Power was being taken away from the nobles and given to the monarchy, and obviously, they were not happy about it. In the movie, this unhappiness was portrayed by the army joining the peasants in storming the Bastille. However, they do not mention the fact that the decision-makers in the army were more than likely nobility. It was most likely left out intentionally, because it would not have served to aid the storyline. The new philosophies were a huge factor in the revolution.
In the movie, the Marquis said the peasants are not human and they were treated as such. One scene shows the castle s dogs being fed huge racks of meat while the starving peasants look on. Though Darnay was a humanist and believed in the people, he was in the minority. I believe that there was more than one noble in France who believed in the new philosophies, and more still that believed the peasantry was indeed human. The bourgeoisie and the peasants quickly became enamoured with the new philosophy. Once they came to understand that people could be equal, and that their place in life could be more than just where you were born, they quickly became angered.
The ideas spread rapidly, and the more people subscribed to these ideas, the closer revolution loomed. Madame de Farge was the embodiment of these ideas in Tale of Two Cities. She had a following of people that sat with her in her husband s wine shop, and discussed the oppression they all went through. Though, in the accounts of the revolution I have read, I didn t see much about the peasants wanting retribution, so much as reform. De Farge was all about revenge, and people seeking revenge are often shortsighted. Though by some rights, the movie version of A Tale of Two Cities was fair and correct, it also fell short.
Bias came heavily into play when Dickens tried to bring England into the picture. Also, the true causes of the revolution became hidden when the violence became the main imagery of the movie.
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Research essay sample on Tale Of Two Cities Causes Of The Revolution
