Guess what I'm doing? A Tale of Two Cities. I know! I know! Dickens AGAIN?! Wait, I think I'm on to something.
Last read according to my note on the inside flap, October 27, 2011. Penguin edition. Great introduction by Richard Maxwell.
Remember old man Manette?...Uh oh. Man, Manette. What would be a literary term for "Woman?" A Man-ette. Well, why would Dickens give the name Man-ette to the central male figure? Leave me alone.
Wait, there's more. You know what the derivation of "sabotage" is, right? Workers in Revolutionary France would throw their sabots, shoes, into machinery to fuck-ed them up-ed. Now, what is Manette constantly doing in the Bastille? Making a "man-ette's" shoe.
Women's shoes are erotic.
The foot has a similar perfume-that-needs-no-bottle to a vagina.
Last read according to my note on the inside flap, October 27, 2011. Penguin edition. Great introduction by Richard Maxwell.
Remember old man Manette?...Uh oh. Man, Manette. What would be a literary term for "Woman?" A Man-ette. Well, why would Dickens give the name Man-ette to the central male figure? Leave me alone.
Wait, there's more. You know what the derivation of "sabotage" is, right? Workers in Revolutionary France would throw their sabots, shoes, into machinery to fuck-ed them up-ed. Now, what is Manette constantly doing in the Bastille? Making a "man-ette's" shoe.
Women's shoes are erotic.
They are sometimes metaphor for vagina (cf Cinderella and her glass slipper).They are shaped, comme ci comme ca, like a vagina; are sometimes explicitly depicted to be the vagina.
You still want to debate me on this?
The foot has a similar perfume-that-needs-no-bottle to a vagina.
There is a shoe fetish, a foot fetish, a foot-in-shoe fetish. (There is a fetish for everything. Just sayin' there is also one of ancient lineage and in different cultures for women's shoes and for women's feet.)
Manette has a daughter, Lucie, 17 years old. Take it away, Richard,
When [Lucie] arrives in Paris, [Manette] is...engaged in fashioning a lady's shoe. Gradually his attention is deflected from shoe to daughter.
Charles Darnay courts and marries Lucie. How does Papa Manette feel about that, Richard?
When Lucie and Charles leave on their honeymoon, Manette almost immediately reverts to making shoes...As the daughter replaced the shoes, so the shoes replace the daughter. The effect is almost that of a fetish, though it is less shoes in themselves than the process of making them--of bringing them into being...
...
...the father can just barely tolerate his daughter's marriage without going permanently mad or becoming, once more, a maker of shoes.
Pussy produces in men a fever that can destroy them--Anybody want to debate that with me?--just as women's sabots were used to destroy Man's machines. Who is the most dangerous agent of destruction in A Tale of Two Cities? Woman, Madame Defarge.
Charles Darnay is of the Evremonde family. Charles Darnay who has the fever for Lucie is of the "Feverworld" family.
Physically, Lucie resembles Ellen Ternan, the eighteen-year-old actress with whom Dickens had recently taken up...young enough to be his daughter...a sort of implied emotional incest.
Most of the foregoing is not the product of my fevered brain. Credit goes to Richard Maxwell. Maxwell does not mention the word play however. And there may be more. I did not realize Manette-Man-ette, Evremond-Feverworld until the start of this post.
But tonight's eureka moment came to me on my own. Neither Maxwell, nor anyone that I have found tonight in quick researches, previously had seen a link between the sexual metaphors in A Tale of Two Cities by England's greatest novelist and the life and work of England's greatest poet, John Donne.
Lover's Progress, John Donne:
So we her airs contemplate, words and heart,
And virtues, but we love the centric part. [vagina]
Nor is the soul [I suggest "sole"] more worthy, or more fit
For love, than this, as infinite as it.
But in attaining this desired place
How much they err, that set out at the face?
Donne then goes down the body parts.
When thou art there, consider what this chase
Misspent by thy beginning at the face.
Rather set out below; practice thy art;
Some symmetry the foot hath with that part
Which thou dost seek, and is thy map for that,
Lovely enough to stop, but not stay at.
...
It is the emblem that hath figured
Firmness; 'tis the first part that comes to bed.
...
If kings think that the nearer way, and do
Rise from the foot, lovers may do so too;
It is inconceivable that Charles Dickens would not have read Donne, who wrote such erotic poetry and not seen the symmetry between Donne's, life and Dickens' own when he wrote A Tale of Two Cities for John Donne fell in love with Ann More the 17 year-old niece of the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, who employed Donne as his chief secretary, just as Dickens had with 18 year-old Ellen Ternan shortly before commencing work on A Tale of Two Cities. Donne's fever for that young thang enraged Sir Thomas Egerton and ruined Donne's career. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Yet, this here undersigned poet-and-he-don't-know-it could find can no link that scholars have ever made between the two men or these two writings. You know how Wikipedia will often list "Influenced by" and "Influenced" for authors? In neither entry for Dickens nor for Donne is the other mentioned. Nor does Maxwell mention Donne's influence. Thomas Carlyle is the major influence on Dickens for Tale of Two Cities according to Maxwell.
Is A Tale of Two Cities even about the French Revolution? Or is it elaborate tableau for Dickens to write about the tortures his fevered brain was putting him through with his affair with Ellen Ternan?
My doubts to the former are founded, not quite as insubstantially as on sand, but on evidence noted by a careful scholar, by the suggestive world play, and by the hidden but I have no doubt present influence of Donne, his life and works, on Dickens' life and this work.
Good night.
When [Lucie] arrives in Paris, [Manette] is...engaged in fashioning a lady's shoe. Gradually his attention is deflected from shoe to daughter.
Charles Darnay courts and marries Lucie. How does Papa Manette feel about that, Richard?
When Lucie and Charles leave on their honeymoon, Manette almost immediately reverts to making shoes...As the daughter replaced the shoes, so the shoes replace the daughter. The effect is almost that of a fetish, though it is less shoes in themselves than the process of making them--of bringing them into being...
...
...the father can just barely tolerate his daughter's marriage without going permanently mad or becoming, once more, a maker of shoes.
Pussy produces in men a fever that can destroy them--Anybody want to debate that with me?--just as women's sabots were used to destroy Man's machines. Who is the most dangerous agent of destruction in A Tale of Two Cities? Woman, Madame Defarge.
Charles Darnay is of the Evremonde family. Charles Darnay who has the fever for Lucie is of the "Feverworld" family.
Physically, Lucie resembles Ellen Ternan, the eighteen-year-old actress with whom Dickens had recently taken up...young enough to be his daughter...a sort of implied emotional incest.
Most of the foregoing is not the product of my fevered brain. Credit goes to Richard Maxwell. Maxwell does not mention the word play however. And there may be more. I did not realize Manette-Man-ette, Evremond-Feverworld until the start of this post.
But tonight's eureka moment came to me on my own. Neither Maxwell, nor anyone that I have found tonight in quick researches, previously had seen a link between the sexual metaphors in A Tale of Two Cities by England's greatest novelist and the life and work of England's greatest poet, John Donne.
Lover's Progress, John Donne:
So we her airs contemplate, words and heart,
And virtues, but we love the centric part. [vagina]
Nor is the soul [I suggest "sole"] more worthy, or more fit
For love, than this, as infinite as it.
But in attaining this desired place
How much they err, that set out at the face?
Donne then goes down the body parts.
When thou art there, consider what this chase
Misspent by thy beginning at the face.
Rather set out below; practice thy art;
Some symmetry the foot hath with that part
Which thou dost seek, and is thy map for that,
Lovely enough to stop, but not stay at.
...
It is the emblem that hath figured
Firmness; 'tis the first part that comes to bed.
...
If kings think that the nearer way, and do
Rise from the foot, lovers may do so too;
It is inconceivable that Charles Dickens would not have read Donne, who wrote such erotic poetry and not seen the symmetry between Donne's, life and Dickens' own when he wrote A Tale of Two Cities for John Donne fell in love with Ann More the 17 year-old niece of the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, who employed Donne as his chief secretary, just as Dickens had with 18 year-old Ellen Ternan shortly before commencing work on A Tale of Two Cities. Donne's fever for that young thang enraged Sir Thomas Egerton and ruined Donne's career. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Yet, this here undersigned poet-and-he-don't-know-it could find can no link that scholars have ever made between the two men or these two writings. You know how Wikipedia will often list "Influenced by" and "Influenced" for authors? In neither entry for Dickens nor for Donne is the other mentioned. Nor does Maxwell mention Donne's influence. Thomas Carlyle is the major influence on Dickens for Tale of Two Cities according to Maxwell.
Is A Tale of Two Cities even about the French Revolution? Or is it elaborate tableau for Dickens to write about the tortures his fevered brain was putting him through with his affair with Ellen Ternan?
My doubts to the former are founded, not quite as insubstantially as on sand, but on evidence noted by a careful scholar, by the suggestive world play, and by the hidden but I have no doubt present influence of Donne, his life and works, on Dickens' life and this work.
Good night.
