As the motif of grave threads
through the narrative of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities,
Dr. Manette, Jarvis Lorry, and Charles Darnay are characters who help to
explicate this motif. Overtly, Dr. Manette, One Hundred Five North Tower, is rescued
from the Bastille as the French Revolution begins and "recalled to life" after eighteen
long, lonely years of incarceration. Likewise, Jarvis Lorry, Dr. Manette's double, is
brought back to a social life from the dark confines of Tellson's Bank, which Dickens
likens to a prison; and, in the thinking of Dickens, prison was a
grave. In Chapter One of Book the Second Dickens likens Tellson's Bank to Newgate
prison:
After
bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you feel
into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with
two little counters, where the oldes of men made your cheque shake as if the wind
rustled it...[behind] their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple
Bar....But indeed, at that time, putting to Death was a
recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least all with
Tellson's....Accordingly, the forger was put to death; the utterer of a bad note ws put
to Death....Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its
contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been
ranged on Temple Bar....Cramped in all kinds of dim
cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely.
When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he
was old.
Mr. Lorry has been
hidden and made an old man at Tellson's, but with his assignment to accompany Lucie to
meet her father in Paris, he is brought into a social life, for he finds himself having
to reassure her in a fatherly manner, even carrying her into the garret room where the
former prisoner is stationed. After they return to London, Mr. Lorry visits the
Manettes in Soho, where he is a friend to Dr. Manette
and
the quiet
street-corner was the sunny part of his life....he often walked out...with the Doctor
and Lucie...on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be with them as the family
friend, talking, reading, looking out of window, and generally getting through the
day....
Again the
motif of grave appears with the character of Charles Darnay
who attempts to bury his surname of Evremonde in an effort to escape the infamy of this
name. And, even while this name is yet buried, Darnay finds himself faced with the
grave in a treason charge in Chapter Three of Book the Second. It is by means of his
double that Dickens effects Darnay's release and Darnay is rescued from the grave.
Then, when Darnay is charged by the French revolutionaries, Dr. Manette, who has become
a hero to them, effects his release:
At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and
individually), the populace set up a shout of applause. All the voices were in the
prisoner's favour, and the President declared him [Darnay]
free.
At this trial, Dr.
Manette, too, is resurrected as a Frenchman of respectable
station:
This
new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Lorry
saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it...They put
him into a great chair they had among them...In this car of triumph, not even the
Doctor's entreaties could prevent his being carried to his home on men's
shoulders....
Finally, of
course, Darnay is saved from his third incarceration by the sacrifice of Sydney Carton,
who tells the spy Basard that in his agreement to take Darnay's place, "Don't fear me.
I will be true to the death."
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