Tale Of Two Cities Context Essay

Knowing the context is vital to understanding a novel. It is important to understand the historical and cultural context of A Tale of Two Cities to understand the complexity that has been woven through it by Charles Dickens. Understanding the cultural context is extremely essential to understanding the ideas of enlightenment that are shown throughout the novel, ideas of enlightenment are held in tension by Dickens when he creates a paradox and help the readers to understand the action and conviction of his characters. The Historical context is perhaps the most important as Dickens makes many references the French Revolution and events that occurred in that time period.

The historical context is crucial to understanding the complexity and
Dickens shows many ‘enlightenment’ ideas and that the characters in his book were living in an age on tension by contradicting himself and creating paradoxes. He starts of the book with several paradoxes, an example “it was the epoch of belief, and it was the epoch of incredulity”. Dickens obviously expects the reader to know that in the time of enlightenment and the French Revolution that there were many new ideas about how to live life “Liberty, equality, fraternity or death”. This shows the ideas that the poor in the book were starting to believe in, and also what the poor in the French Revolution thought. Dickens creates parallels “Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them…The trade signs were, all, grim signs of want” and through illustrations such as these show that the poor people wanted equality and rights which are the main ideas of the ‘enlightenment’. Dickens creates these allusions and parallels to help the reader to better understand the characters and by also comprehending the cultural context behind all the actions it influences the understanding of the text to become more realistic and more