# A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Source: https://thegisthub.com/books/a-tale-of-two-cities-by-charles-dickens Last updated: 2026-10-24 Published 1859 · 488 pages · ISBN 9780141439600 · Categories: Fiction, Society and history Charles Dickens's novel of London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, about a freed prisoner, his daughter, the two men who love her and a revenge that waits for years. For readers who want the plot book by book and its ideas. ## The gist **Doctor Manette** is released after eighteen years in the Bastille and brought to London by his daughter, **Lucie**. Two men who look alike love her: **Charles Darnay**, a French aristocrat who has given up his cruel family's name, and **Sydney Carton**, a brilliant, drunken English lawyer who thinks his life is wasted. Lucie marries Darnay. In Paris, the wine seller **Defarge** and his wife, who knits the names of the doomed, prepare the Revolution. When it comes, Darnay returns to France to help an old servant and is caught by the past. Dickens writes about oppression, revenge, sacrifice and resurrection. ## Key ideas ### 1. Recalled to life Resurrection runs through the whole novel. Doctor Manette is brought back from eighteen years in the Bastille, the living dead in his cell. Darnay is twice saved from death in court. Jerry Cruncher, the resurrection man, digs up bodies for money, and a spy's coffin turns out to hold stones. Carton finds a kind of new life only by giving his own. Dickens uses the idea at every level, from comedy to tragedy, to ask what it means for a person or a nation to be reborn. ### 2. Oppression breeds revenge Dickens shows the French aristocracy in the Marquis St. Evrémonde, who runs over a child and tosses a gold coin as payment. Poor people scoop spilled wine from the street to drink. When the Revolution comes, the poor take bloody revenge. Dickens does not excuse the killing, but he insists it has a cause. His warning, aimed at his own England, is that a society that crushes the poor will produce the violence it fears. Injustice plants the seed and revenge is the harvest. ### 3. Revenge becomes a new tyranny Madame Defarge knits the names of the doomed into her register. Her cause is real: the Evrémondes destroyed her family. But her hatred grows until she wants to kill an innocent woman and child. The revolutionary courts condemn people for their names, and the guillotine becomes a goddess. Dickens argues that revenge, once loosed, does not stop at the guilty. The oppressed copy the cruelty of their old masters, and new victims pay for old crimes. ### 4. Doubles and second chances Darnay and Carton look so alike that a court cannot tell them apart. Darnay is the man Carton could have been: hardworking, respected and loved by Lucie. Carton is clever but wasted by drink and despair. The resemblance saves Darnay in the first trial and makes the ending possible. Dickens uses the two men to ask whether a wasted life can still find meaning, and whether one person's worth can redeem another's. ### 5. The past is never buried Manette's prison letter, hidden in the wall of cell One Hundred and Five, lies there for more than twenty years before it returns to decide a trial. Darnay gives up his family name, but the Revolution judges him by it anyway. Manette's trauma returns as shoemaking whenever he is shocked. Dickens shows how personal and political pasts come back. A person cannot simply renounce an inheritance; the debts of one generation are often collected from the next. ### 6. Love as the golden thread Lucie's love brings her father back to sanity, and her home in Soho becomes the center that holds the other characters together. Dickens calls her the golden thread. Miss Pross's fierce loyalty, Lorry's steady care and Carton's silent devotion all grow from the same circle. Against the mob and the guillotine, the novel sets small private loyalties. Dickens suggests that these, not politics, are what keep people human in a time of terror. ### 7. (Spoiler) A far better thing Carton changes places with Darnay in the condemned cell and dies on the guillotine in his place. He goes calmly and comforts a frightened seamstress on the way. He has kept the promise he made to Lucie years earlier, to give his life for someone she loves. In the final pages Dickens imagines his last thoughts: that this is the best thing he has ever done. The sacrifice turns the wasted man into the hero, and the theme of resurrection reaches its peak. ## Questions this book answers ### What is A Tale of Two Cities about? A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is about Doctor Manette, freed after eighteen years in the Bastille, his daughter Lucie, and the two look-alike men who love her: the French aristocrat Charles Darnay and the English lawyer Sydney Carton. Set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, it shows how injustice breeds revenge and how one wasted life finds meaning in sacrifice. ### Who is Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities? Sydney Carton is a brilliant but drunken English lawyer who does Stryver's work for him. He looks almost exactly like Charles Darnay and saves him at his first trial. He loves Lucie Manette, knows he does not deserve her, and promises he would give his life for anyone she loves. ### Why does Madame Defarge hate the Evrémondes? Madame Defarge is the younger sister of a peasant woman raped by one of the Evrémonde brothers and of a brother they killed. Her whole family was destroyed by them. She has spent years waiting for revenge and knits the family's name into her register of those who must die. ### How does A Tale of Two Cities end? Spoiler: Darnay is condemned to death after Manette's old prison letter is read at his trial. Sydney Carton drugs him, changes places with him in the cell and goes to the guillotine in his place. Darnay, Lucie and their family escape Paris. Madame Defarge is killed in a fight with Miss Pross. Carton dies calmly, thinking it is the best thing he has ever done. ### What is the main theme of A Tale of Two Cities? The main theme is resurrection: Manette recalled to life from prison, Darnay saved from death twice, and Carton giving his life to find meaning. Other themes are the way oppression breeds revenge, the way revenge becomes its own tyranny, and the power of love and loyalty in a time of terror. ## Quotes > It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness (The opening line, Book 1, Chapter 1) > I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me. (Sydney Carton to Charles Darnay, Book 2, Chapter 4) ## Full summary ### Two cities, one revolution **A Tale of Two Cities** by Charles Dickens came out in weekly parts in 1859 in his new magazine All the Year Round, and as a book the same year. It is his second historical novel, after Barnaby Rudge. It is set between 1775 and 1793, in London and Paris, before and during the French Revolution. Dickens drew much of his history from Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution. The novel opens with one of the most famous sentences in English, a long list of opposites: the best and worst of times, wisdom and foolishness, belief and doubt. Dickens says the period was like his own. He warns that a society that grinds the poor will reap violence, and he shows that the violence, once loosed, becomes its own tyranny. The book has three parts. **Book the First: Recalled to Life** brings a prisoner back from the Bastille. **Book the Second: The Golden Thread** follows the family in London and the gathering storm in France. **Book the Third: The Track of a Storm** takes the main characters into revolutionary Paris. The central themes are resurrection, the cost of injustice, revenge and self-sacrifice. ### Book the First: recalled to life In 1775, **Jarvis Lorry**, a clerk at Tellson's Bank, rides the Dover mail coach. The bank's messenger, **Jerry Cruncher**, gallops after him with a message, and Lorry answers: "Recalled to life." At Dover he meets **Lucie Manette**, a young Frenchwoman raised in England, who believes she is an orphan. Lorry tells her that her father, **Doctor Alexandre Manette**, is alive. He has been held in the Bastille for eighteen years without trial and has just been released. In Paris they go to the poor district of Saint Antoine. A cask of wine breaks in the street, and starving people scoop it from the stones. A joker writes the word BLOOD on a wall with the red wine. The wine shop belongs to **Ernest Defarge**, once Manette's servant, and his wife, **Thérèse Defarge**, who sits knitting and sees everything. Defarge and three other men, all called **Jacques**, are revolutionaries. In a garret above the shop, Manette sits making shoes. Prison has broken his mind. He does not know his name and answers only "One Hundred and Five, North Tower," his cell number. Lucie holds him and weeps, and something in her golden hair reminds him of his wife. Lorry and Lucie take him to England. ### Book the Second: the golden thread Five years later, in 1780, a young Frenchman, **Charles Darnay**, is on trial for treason at the Old Bailey in London. He is accused of carrying English secrets to France. Lucie and her father were fellow passengers on the boat when Darnay crossed the Channel, and they must testify against him. The defense lawyer, **Mr. Stryver**, does well, but the key moment comes from his idle assistant, **Sydney Carton**. A witness swears he saw Darnay in a certain place. Carton points out that he himself looks so much like the prisoner that the witness could have seen either of them. The case collapses and Darnay goes free. Carton is clever but drinks and does Stryver's work for him in secret. He tells Darnay that he cares for no one and no one cares for him. He envies Darnay, who looks like him but has made something of his life. Manette slowly recovers in a quiet house in Soho, where his daughter's love is the golden thread that holds his life together. He sometimes slips back into the habits of prison, pacing at night. Lucie's fierce, loyal servant, **Miss Pross**, watches over the house. Darnay, Carton and Stryver all visit. In France, the **Marquis St. Evrémonde** drives his carriage at full speed through Paris and runs over a child. He throws out a gold coin as payment, and another to the wine seller **Defarge**, who comforts the father, **Gaspard**. As the carriage moves off, a coin flies back into it. No one sees who threw it. Where Defarge stood, a dark, stout woman stands knitting. At his château, the Marquis meets his nephew, who turns out to be Darnay. Darnay hates the family's cruelty, gives up its name and lands, and plans to earn his own living in England. That night the Marquis is stabbed in his bed. A note on the knife reads: "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques." Gaspard is later caught and hanged. ### Love, marriage and secrets Darnay teaches French in London and asks Manette for permission to marry Lucie. He offers to tell Manette his real name. Manette asks him to wait until the wedding morning. Carton confesses his love to Lucie. He says he knows he is not worthy and will never be, but that she has inspired him. He tells her that he would give his life to keep a life she loves beside her. He asks her to remember this, and she promises to keep his secret. On the wedding morning, Darnay tells Manette his name: Evrémonde. After the couple leaves on their honeymoon, Manette relapses and makes shoes for nine days. Lorry and Miss Pross nurse him through it, and afterward they destroy his shoemaker's bench and tools. The years pass. Lucie and Charles have a daughter, also named Lucie. Carton becomes a quiet friend of the family. Jerry Cruncher, Tellson's messenger, turns out to be a **resurrection man**, a body snatcher who digs up fresh corpses at night to sell to doctors. He finds that the coffin of a spy, **Roger Cly**, holds only stones. In Saint Antoine, a spy named **John Barsad** comes to the wine shop. Madame Defarge knits his name into her register, a record of everyone the revolution will punish. The Defarges and the Jacques wait. ### The storm breaks In July 1789, the people of Saint Antoine storm the Bastille, with Defarge leading. He goes straight to cell One Hundred and Five, North Tower, and searches it carefully. Madame Defarge cuts off the head of the governor with her own knife. Days later, the crowd hangs an old official, **Foulon**, who once said the hungry could eat grass. In the countryside, peasants burn the château of Evrémonde. In 1792, a letter reaches Darnay at Tellson's. It comes from **Gabelle**, the family's old servant, who was arrested for collecting rents for Darnay and faces death. Darnay feels responsible. He tells no one and leaves for Paris. ### Book the Third: the track of a storm France is now a place of passes, guards and suspicion. At the city gate, Darnay is arrested as an emigrant aristocrat. Defarge refuses to help him. He is sent to the prison of La Force. Lucie, her daughter, Miss Pross and Manette follow him to Paris. Manette's eighteen years in the Bastille make him a hero to the revolutionaries, and he uses his influence to protect his son-in-law. He works as a doctor to the prisons. For more than a year Darnay waits in prison while the guillotine, which Dickens calls La Guillotine, takes hundreds of lives. Lucie stands every day at a corner where Darnay might see her from his window. Madame Defarge watches her. At last Darnay is tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Manette speaks for him, Gabelle testifies, and the crowd cheers his release. For a moment the family thinks it is safe. ### Spoilers: the ending This section reveals the ending. That same evening Darnay is arrested again, denounced by the Defarges and by one other person. At the new trial, the other person turns out to be Doctor Manette himself. Defarge produces a letter Manette wrote in his cell in 1767 and hid in the wall. In it, Manette tells how two noble brothers, the Evrémonde twins, took him to treat a dying peasant woman and her brother. One brother had raped the woman, and had stabbed her brother when he fought back. Manette wrote to a government minister to report the crime. The brothers had him seized and locked in the Bastille. The letter curses the Evrémondes and their descendants to the last of their race. Darnay is the son of one of the twins and the nephew of the other. The court sentences him to die within twenty-four hours. Madame Defarge, it emerges, is the younger sister of the woman and her brother. Sydney Carton has come to Paris. He has found that Barsad, the spy, is now a turnkey at the prison, and that he is Miss Pross's long-lost brother, Solomon. With that secret, Carton forces Barsad to help him. Carton also overhears Madame Defarge planning to denounce Lucie, her child and her father. He gives Lorry his own travel pass and tells him to have the family ready to leave the next afternoon. On the day of the execution, Carton enters Darnay's cell with Barsad's help. He makes Darnay change clothes with him, then drugs him. Barsad carries the unconscious Darnay out as "Carton." Lorry drives the family, including the broken Manette, out of Paris. Madame Defarge goes to the family's lodging with a pistol and a knife. Only Miss Pross is there, packing to follow. The two women fight. The pistol goes off and kills Madame Defarge. The shot leaves Miss Pross deaf for life. Carton rides to the guillotine in a tumbril. Beside him is a young seamstress, who realizes he is not Evrémonde and asks to hold his hand. He comforts her until her turn. The novel ends with the thoughts Carton might have had: a vision of Paris rising from the abyss, of Lucie's family happy, and of a son named after him. His last thought is that what he does is a far better thing than he has ever done, and that he goes to a far better rest than he has ever known. ### What the critics say The novel is often listed among the best-selling novels of all time, but critics have often ranked it below Dickens's other major work. They find its characters thinner and its humor scarce. Others admire its tight plot and its picture of the crowd. Historians note that Dickens takes Carlyle's view of the Revolution and shows the mob as a single, terrifying force, with little sense of its political ideas. Some critics see Lucie as an idealized woman with little life of her own. ### Who should read it Read it if you want a story of revenge and sacrifice set in the French Revolution, or if you are studying the novel and need the three books in order. It suits anyone interested in how injustice breeds violence. ## Do this week - Read the opening paragraph aloud and list each pair of opposites, then note which ones fit your own time. - Track every use of the phrase recalled to life or the idea of resurrection, and note who is reborn and how. - Compare Darnay and Carton in two columns: what each does with his talents, and how each treats Lucie. - Read a short history of the storming of the Bastille and compare it with Dickens's version in Book 2. - Think of one old grievance you still carry, and write down what holding it costs you and the people near you. Summary by The Gist Hub (https://thegisthub.com). In our own words, not the book's text.