Abstract

Charles Dickens (1812 to 1870) is a foremost representative novelist of the Victorian era, a great story-teller and social reformer. A Tale of Two Cities has always been one of his most popular and best-loved novels. It is the second attempt on historical fiction by Dickens and French Revolution is his subject. Always interested in the interaction between individuals and society, Dickens was particularly inspired by Thomas Carlyle's history, The French Revolution. He saw similarities between the forces that led to the Revolution and the oppression and unrest occurring in England in his own time. Although he supported the idea of people rising up against tyranny, the violence that characterized the French Revolution troubled him. In the preface to his novel he says “to add something to the popular and picturesque means understanding that terrible time”. The story is set in London, Paris and the French countryside at the time of French Revolution. The book is sympathetic to the overthrow of the French aristocracy but highly critical of the reign of terror that followed. The whole book is dominated by the guillotine-tumbrels thundering to and fro and the bloody knives. Actually, these scenes occupy only a few chapters, but they are written with terrible intensity, and the rest of the book is rather slow going. That is why everyone remembers the revolutionary scenes in A Tale of Two Cities. Again and again, he insists upon the meaningless horrors of revolution, the injustice, the ever-present terror of spies, and the frightful blood lust of the mob. The descriptions of the Paris mob, for instance, the crowd of murderers struggling round the grindstone to sharpen their weapons before butchering the prisoners in the September massacres outdo anything. These are the events in the history of France which form the flaming background of A Tale of Two Cities. Its interpretation of the French Revolution has strongly shaped the British views of national identity and political legitimacy. At the same time, it offers a powerful melodramatic plot pitting private individuals against political systems. 

Key words: Charles Dickens english novel, french revolution and Shakespeare.