Dickens Attitude Towards The French Revolution as Depicted in "A Tale of Two Cities"
The French Revolution
was an influential period of social and political upheaval in France that
lasted from 1789 until 1799. During this period French citizens razed and
redesigned their country’s political landscape uprooting centuries old
institutions such as absolute monarchy and the feudal system. The famous slogan
of the French Revolution was ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’.
"Jane Eyre" is an Anti-romantic Novel with a Romantic Ending
The romantic novel is a
literary genre which places primary focus on the relationship and romantic love
between two people and must have an ‘emotionally satisfying and optimistic
ending’. ‘Jane Eyre’ can be termed a romantic novel because of Jane’s deep
attachment to Mr. Rochester. But Mr. Rochester is not a handsome romantic hero
and Jane Eyre is not a pretty girl. There is a great disparity of their age-
while Jane is twenty years old Mr. Rochester is almost forty.
Hardy’s philosophy is
marked with a strong note of fatalism. In his novels characters are helpless
creatures and mere puppets in the hands of fate. They cannot enjoy free will.
In the case of tees every incident in her life seems to take place as if determined
by some unseen indifferent power which takes a malicious delight in her sorrows
and sufferings.
Gothic novel is a type
of romance or fiction the setting of which was medieval and often a gloomy
castle full of dungeons and underground passages. These kinds of novels replete
with ghosts, mysterious disappearance and other sensational and supernatural
occurrences and violent incidents. Jane Eyre uses may forms of the Gothic genre in order to create emotion and get an audience reaction. The most common Gothic form Bronte uses is Jane’s descriptions of the red room, Thornfield Hall the use of supernatural, mysteries, suspense, a ghostly atmosphere, a setting in a
castle, the appearances of a fortune-teller etc.
Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” a Historical Novel
A historical novel deals
with historical events. "A Tale of Two Cities" is a historical novel in the sense
that it focuses on the period before and during the French Revolution. In the
novel Dickens gives the picture of England and of France during the 1780s.
