However, what inconvenient facts discredits Cly?.How does Roger Cly's testimony seem more conclusive?.What is suspicious about the Crown's evidence?.What are the incriminating circumstances under which Darnay had travelled back and forth from England to France?.How does Stryver discredit the prosecution's first witness, John Barsad?.What changed impression do we get of Dr.Cutting out the bombast, what precisely is the charge levelled at Darnay? See the note on the source of this trial on p.For what crime is the punishment reserved?.What punishment is meant by 'quartering'?.How is Dickens critical of both the Old Bailey and Bedlam?.How does Tellson's epitomize English complacency?.How do Jerry's hands and boots constitute a mystery?.Jerry Cruncher is the only character reminiscent of the broadly-drawn comic caricatures that figure so prominently in his early novels: how is he both comic and yet consistent with Dickens' attack on social conditions?.How does his description of Tellson's Bank suggest Dickens' characteristic over-writing?.

In the second book Dickens divides his time almost evenly between France and England, but clearly it is France's political, economic, and especially its social problems that fascinate him.Ĭontrast the French system of 'justice,' as presented in Book One, with that of England, as given in Book Two.

The Pickwick Papers (1837), David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-3), and the novel following A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations (1861), all reveal Dickens's first-hand knowledge of the British legal system (and generally reflect his contempt for it). Manette's escape from France, Dickens satirizes English justice (which Temple Bar indicates was not nearly so enlightened as Dickens's Middle Class readers liked to imagine), lawyers, and courts of law, all of which Dickens knew from his father's imprisonment for debt in 1824 at Marshalsea (notoriously depicted in Little Dorrit, 1855-7), from his own employment at the age of 15 as a lawyer's clerk, and from his stint as a shorthand reporter in the Courts of Doctors (of Law) Commons. In 'The Golden Thread,' which opens in London five years after Dr. Please continue to read the notes in the back of the book, such as that on Temple Bar (p. Since there are twenty-four chapters in this section of the novel, we cannot study these in the same detail as we did the highly-significant, first six expository chapters. Book II: 'The Golden Thread' (For Discussion)

A tale of two cities book 2