Darkness and light in A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” is a story about contrasts, as is evident from the very title. We are shown the two cities, namely London and Paris, in very different lights, with Paris being the city of revolution and danger and London as the place of peace and sanctuary. Along with this contrast are the themes of night and day, darkness and light, running through the book.

The tale begins at night, with Mr Lorry making his journey to Dover to catch the ferry to France, where he is to rescue Dr Manette. It ends in daylight, with the death by guillotine of the hero, Sydney Carton. However, to equate darkness with evil and light with good is to make too facile a judgment, and Dickens is far too clever a writer to make so obvious a distinction. In the examples given above, a good deed is performed at night and an evil one in daylight.

That said, Dickens is happy to make use of the conventional approach when it suits him. At the end of Chapter 16, darkness falls in Paris just before the Revolution starts. He writes:

“Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into thunder cannon …”

The chapter that follows is entitled “One Night”, but it describes a peaceful moonlit evening in London, with Lucy Manette receiving reassurance from her father on the eve of her wedding day. Here, darkness and light are intermingled, as the full moon reminds Dr Manette of the sad times spent looking out of his former prison cell and thinking of the wife and daughter he believed he had lost forever.

The cover of darkness is used to perform deeds that are secret, sometimes they are evil, sometimes not. Jerry Cruncher robs graves at night, but Jerry is on the “good” side in the story, and his activities lead to the unravelling of one of the mysteries.

Sydney Carton is dissolute by day but works hard at night, producing brilliant legal defences that make the reputation of his employer, including the acquittal of the man who will become Lucy’s husband and for whom Sydney will sacrifice his life.

Charles Darney’s evil uncle, the Marquis St Evremonde, is murdered at night. However, the destruction of a cynical aristocrat who cares nothing for the peasants is a deed that we regard as good, although it also has evil consequences.

The focus of much of the action in Paris is the Bastille prison, which is a place of darkness at all times. When it is stormed by the revolutionaries, Dickens gives us the following:

“Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages …”

The mob is described as a “sea of black and threatening waters”, and light is only supplied by the fires of burning chateaux and other property seized from the aristocrats.

The metaphor of darkness and light also appears in the creation of shadows, which are of course the result of light that is prevented from shining by obstacles placed in its way. The dark figures of the mob, particularly Madame Defarge, are often described in terms of shadow, and as being the creators of shadow. Lucy remarks at one point that “that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes”.

As the story approaches its close, the reason for Dr Manette’s imprisonment is recounted in a chapter entitled “The Substance of the Shadow”, with the next two chapters entitled “Dusk” and “Darkness”. In the second of these, the darkness of Madame Defarge’s cruelty is contrasted with the light of Carton’s resolve to save his rival in love, Charles Darnay, and thus, through self-sacrifice, to end his life in service to Lucy Manette.

The interplay of darkness, light and shadow are therefore constant, and Dickens’s choice of chapter titles shows that this is no accident. However, the chaos of revolution is reflected in the uncertainties introduced by Dickens as good and evil deeds are associated sometimes with light and sometimes with darkness.

A Tale of Two Cities is not regarded by most critics as being one of Dickens’s greatest novels, but we know that he was very pleased with it. Perhaps later readers have misjudged it by not being aware of many of the subtleties that the author introduced, with darkness and light being one of the mechanisms used to great effect.

© John Welford