In March 1858 Charles Dickens wrote to his friend John Forster of his domestic turmoil:
"...present circumstances at home. Nothing can put them right, until we are all dead and buried and risen."
In 1859 Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities and the theme of resurrection, being "dead and buried and risen," recurs repeatedly.
Dickens continued in his letter to Forster:
"It is not, with me, a matter of will, or trial, or sufferance, or good humour, or making the best of it, or making the worst of it, any longer."
The opening words of the book are,
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
The letter:
"Have no lingering hope of, or for, me in this association...Will you then try to think of this [public] reading project...solely with a view to its effect on that particular relation (personally affectionate and like no other man's) which subsists between me and the public?..."
The book:
"‘I know,’ said Darnay, respectfully, ‘how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette...that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and a child.’"
Charles Darnay--one of the major figures of the book--Charles Dickens.
Lucie Manette--wife of Charles Darnay, daughter of the resurrected Dr. Manette--Ellen Ternan, real-life love of Dickens at this best and worst time. Lucy and Nelly were almost exactly the same age and physically resembled each other.
"Michael Slater points to the theme of doubles and double lives in this novel and associates
the focus with ‘the different lives that Dickens himself was simultaneously living by this time’
dominated by both his separation from his wife and his increasingly close relations with Ellen
Ternan (Nelly)...
It was women's shoe-making, women's shoes and feet being stand-ins for the vagina in English literature since John Donne, and the "strikingly odd," "strangely violent," "quite grisly" destruction of the "man-ette's" shoe-making workbench is Charles Dickens' destruction of his own man's equipage and of the carnal lust that has murdered his marriage and wreaked havoc on his psyche.
No scholar has put this all together and I truly find that strikingly odd.
"...present circumstances at home. Nothing can put them right, until we are all dead and buried and risen."
In 1859 Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities and the theme of resurrection, being "dead and buried and risen," recurs repeatedly.
Dickens continued in his letter to Forster:
"It is not, with me, a matter of will, or trial, or sufferance, or good humour, or making the best of it, or making the worst of it, any longer."
The opening words of the book are,
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
The letter:
"Have no lingering hope of, or for, me in this association...Will you then try to think of this [public] reading project...solely with a view to its effect on that particular relation (personally affectionate and like no other man's) which subsists between me and the public?..."
The book:
"‘I know,’ said Darnay, respectfully, ‘how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette...that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and a child.’"
Charles Darnay--one of the major figures of the book--Charles Dickens.
Lucie Manette--wife of Charles Darnay, daughter of the resurrected Dr. Manette--Ellen Ternan, real-life love of Dickens at this best and worst time. Lucy and Nelly were almost exactly the same age and physically resembled each other.
In scholarly analysis Ian Brinton writes,
the focus with ‘the different lives that Dickens himself was simultaneously living by this time’
dominated by both his separation from his wife and his increasingly close relations with Ellen
Ternan (Nelly)...
"If Dickens’s growing affections for Nelly Ternan and his increasing hostility towards his wife
may have had any effect on the composition of A Tale..."
"If"?
John Drew:
The demolition of Dr. Manette's shoe-making workbench…is a rare case where death or destruction…has a positive connotation…But Dickens's description of this kind and healing act is strikingly odd:
"So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime."
This sacrifice is strangely violent…There is something quite grisly in Dickens’s description of the deed:
"There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker’s bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder...The burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the purpose), was commenced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden".
https://dickensataleoftwocities.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/week-17-the-murder-of-the-bench-2/It was women's shoe-making, women's shoes and feet being stand-ins for the vagina in English literature since John Donne, and the "strikingly odd," "strangely violent," "quite grisly" destruction of the "man-ette's" shoe-making workbench is Charles Dickens' destruction of his own man's equipage and of the carnal lust that has murdered his marriage and wreaked havoc on his psyche.
No scholar has put this all together and I truly find that strikingly odd.