French Nobility in the Eyes of an Englishmen
The famous author Charles Dickens wrote a Tale of Two Cities. This book is a historical fiction novel. The setting of this novel is based in two European cities, like it say’s in the title, London and Paris. There are about eight important characters in this novel. Charles Darnay, charged for treason and denounces title, Sydney Carton, thinks he’s nothing then dies for a friend, Dr. Manette, prisoner of the Bastille, Jarvis Lorry, a banker, Lucie Manette, wife of Darnay, Marquis St. Evermonde, the nobility, Miss Pross, Lucie’s old nanny, and Madame Defarge, leader of the revolution. The focus of the paper is simply this “ why would does Charles Dickens, an Englishmen, write about French nobility
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Louis XV had died and his grandson, Louis XVI, is taking over. Louis got married to his wife when he was only sixteen. They had only met when they got married and Louis already had some issues with being shy around his wife in private and being very mean to her in public. So that didn’t help how they ruled their country and their people. And it showed in how they treated their people. They didn’t really care too much about their people. In France the nobility only cared about themselves and what happened to them and their possessions. In A Tale of Two Cities, The Marquis St. Evermonde decided to run over a child that was in the street. (Dickens, 115) When his carriage stopped all he was worried about was his horse and carriage. The father of this child was in shock. When the Marquis left, he threw a couple coins out the window and drove off (Dickens, 115-117) The nobility was like ghosts, but they weren’t living in reality. (Dickens, …show more content…
They were treated harshly and the nobility didn’t really care at all. They just went on with their business and thought a few coins would suffice. But un the end they really didn’t help at because they would just end up giving them back to the nobility due to high taxes or supposed fees they had to pay. He also showed that even when they were treated badly, they fought back, literally. This novel teaches many lessons on morals and ethics, or how we should treat people, how we shouldn’t treat people, like running over their child. That’s just rude. In many ways this book is powerful and meaningful in lessons taught. The characters symbolized many things like Sydney Carton illustrating an almost Godly figure by dying for Lucie just so she could be with her husband. That’s pretty amazing. And Charles Darnay denouncing everything because he didn’t want to be a part of the very selfish, greedy and arrogant nobility. This book taught many lessons that are very meaningful to take
The way Louis XIV ruled over France was not quite the way his father ruled. Louis XIV was considered to have unruly nobility. Louis XIV was also in the process of reinforcing the traditional Gallicanism, which is a doctrine limiting the authority of the Pope in France. Also, Louis XIV began to diminish the power of the nobility and clergy. He achieved great control over the second estate (nobility) in France by essentially attaching much of the higher nobility to his range at his palace at Versailles, which required them to spend most of the year under his close watch instead of in th...
King Louis XVI was next in line for the throne in 1774 and gladly inherited it from Louis XIV to become the ruler over France. He drastically changed the whole country and put its people through ghastly conditions. There was not a soul left unharmed. In Paris, nearly half of its population in 1788 was unemployed. They produced no crops due to them not growing and had extremely high prices on food. With the whole nation already furious with his doings, he decided to marry Marie Antoinette who was foreign. They decided to blame her for their problems of their economy because they figured that King Louis was letting her make major decisions and control them. Together, Antoinette and Louis had a total of four children. Their oldest child lived to be seventy-three.
To support a major theme of this novel, scarecrows and birds of fine song and feather, wine and knitting, all represent the theme of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man. The Revolution was a tragically devastating time full of senseless and meaningless violence, deception of neighbors as well as treason towards the government, and blissful ignorance of the surroundings. Many scenes and dialogue from this novel point out what contributed to make the revolution a period of intense political destruction. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens includes many themes pertaining to the French Revolution and the moralities and immoralities that goes with violence, betrayal, and ignorance, by using many different types of symbolism.
When Louis the XIV began his rule in 1643, his actions immediately began to suggest and absolute dictatorship. Because of the misery he had previously suffered, one of the first things he did was to decrease the power of the nobility. He withdrew himself from the rich upper class, doing everything secretly. The wealth had no connection to Louis, and therefore all power they previously had was gone. He had complete control over the nobles, spying, going through mail, and a secret police force made sure that Louis had absolute power. Louis appointed all of his officials, middle class men who served him without wanting any power. Louis wanted it clear that none of his power would be shared. He wanted "people to know by the rank of the men who served him that he had no intention of sharing power with them." If Louis XIV appointed advisors from the upper classes, they would expect to gain power, and Louis was not willing to give it to them. The way Louis XIV ruled, the sole powerful leader, made him an absolute ruler. He had divine rule, and did not want to give any power to anyone other than himself. These beliefs made him an absolute ruler.
The French Revolution is a war between the peasants and the aristocrats. A Tale of Two Cities is by Charles Dickens and is set in England and France from 1775-1793. The French Revolution is starting to come about because the French peasants are trying to model their revolution after the American Revolution. King Louis XVI of France supported the colonists in the American Revolution; therefore, it is ironic that he does not help the poor, distressed, and oppressed peasants in France. The peasants are trying to rise against the oppressive aristocrats because the rich are unfeeling and mean towards the poor serfs. In A Tale of Two Cities, the symbols help represent the theme of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man because the symbol of the scarecrows and birds of fine song and feather is helpful in understanding the differences between the poor and the rich, the Gorgon’s head is meaningful because it shows that change needs to occur, and the knitting is insightful because one learns that evil can come out of good intentions.
Kalil, Marie. Cliffs notes on Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Cliff Notes Inc, June 2000
During Louis's reign, France was the leading European power and it fought three major wars. In the document written by Jean Domat, it is stated how King Louis XIV governed France. He wanted citizens to be submissive and obedient to the government, “since God himself established it”. This document also states that each individual owes obedience to the laws, even the unjust ones. This is a type of monarchy that would translate to a communist dictatorship nowadays. King Louis XIV believed that he as the head of the country was taking the place of God. Louis XIV tried to keep power by being authoritative and creating fear on the citizens, while Elizabeth kept power by being likeable to the people. In the “Memoirs of Louis XIV, His Court, and His Regency” it states how the king treated the nobles like servants and how they had to wait in line for a mere chance of getting to speak to him. In the Letter to his Heir, which doesn’t only provide practical advice for the king’s heir; it also provides us with insight into royal attitudes and priorities. In this letter the King explains how all his secretaries of state, chancellor, and Controller had to go through him and receive his command. When Louis XIV was in his deathbed he advised his heir with these words, "Do not follow the bad
Charles Dickens writes this book explaining the French Revolution, in which the social and economic systems in France had huge changes and the French monarchy collapsed. This causes high taxes, unfair laws, and the poor being mistreated. Charles Dickens shows that cruelty of other people will lead to a revolution and in addition to the revolution more cruelty will occur. He explores the idea of justice and violence through the use of ambiguous characters with positive and negative qualities, meaning that they have to different sides to them; for example, Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton, and Dr. Manette. Throughout the story of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles dickens uses ambiguous characters to shows how violence and cruelty can be stopped through the power of true sacrifice.
Many of the absolute monarchs limited the rights of the social classes within their societies. One of the rulers who did this, King Louis XIV of France, angered the lower class by deciding to not administer taxation fees among each social class. They didn’t think that it was fair that the much richer nobles and the church didn't have to pay the king's high taxes, but the poor did. Because Louis exempted two of the three social classes from paying, he opted to increase the tax fee to make up for the nobles and church. This took away what little money the lower class had left, and had a negative impact on the country’s people as the lower class’s rights were restricted when Louis did not uphold equal taxation. While draining the lower class’s funding, Louis’s taxation rules also made it much more difficult for the lower class to survive, as they lost the few rights and privileges they had left.
The French Revolution was a period of radical social and political upheaval, lead by the lower class of France, which began the decline of powerful monarchies in France and the rise of nationalism and democracy. In A Tale Of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens, he highlights these aspects of the war between classes and makes them personal to the reader. Throughout the novel, Dickens’ establishes and develops several symbols in order to help the reader better understand the Revolution and the way people acted during this time. He shows that while emotion, desperation, and irrationality run high, humanity, justice, and morality are scarce. The blue flies, Madame Defarge’s knitting, and the sea are three of Dickens’ symbols that develop his theme of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man throughout the novel.
Dickens is anything but subtle, doing things such as capitalizing the important symbols in his novels and naming some of his characters after their most prevalent trait. While this technique seems like it would soften the universal implications of his novels because they are so easily apparent, instead his unique and blunt writing style is able to carry across many meaningful themes, most easily recognizable, but others not. Dickens unique style is especially prevalent in A Tale of Two Cities, a novel that switches between covering events in London and Paris over the course of the first French revolution. When the book begins, revolution is brewing in France due to cruel oppression by the aristocracy and
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is a classic novel written in the 1850’s by Charles Dickens. The novel is set in London and France during the French Revolution. The novel features an amazing use of themes as well as sensational development of characters. Charles Dickens and his feature style of the poor character who does something great is very evident in Sydney Carton, a drunken lawyer who becomes the hero of the book.
History has not only been important in our lives today, but it has also impacted the classic literature that we read. Charles Dickens has used history as an element of success in many of his works. This has been one of the keys to achievement in his career. Even though it may seem like it, Phillip Allingham lets us know that A Tale of Two Cities is not a history of the French Revolution. This is because no actual people from the time appear in the book (Allingham). Dickens has many different reasons for using the component of history in his novel. John Forster, a historian, tells us that one of these reasons is to advance the plot and to strengthen our understanding of the novel (27). Charles Dickens understood these strategies and could use them to his advantage.
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, is a story set in the year 1775 and through the turbulent time of the French Revolution. It is of people living in love and betrayal, murder and joy, peril and safety, hate and fondness, misery and happiness, gentle actions and ferocious crowds. The novel surrounds a drunken man, Sydney Carton, who performs a heroic deed for his beloved, Lucie Manette, while Monsieur and Madame Defarge, ruthless revolutionaries, seek revenge against the nobles of France. Research suggests that through Dickens’ portrayal of the revolutionaries and nobles of the war, he gives accurate insight to the era of the Revolution.
A Tale of Two Cities promoted the image of a stable England by using revolutionary France as a setting to highlight the contrasts between the two countries, although Dickens seemed to believe in the eighteen-fifties that England was heading towards an uprising on the scale of the French Revolution. In the twentieth century, we see the French Revolution used as a 'lavish' setting in film and TV productions of A Tale of Two Cities. In the preface to the novel, Dickens says "It has been one of my hopes to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding that terrible time" (xiii).