118 pages • 3 hours read
Charles DickensA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Vocabulary
Essay Topics
Quiz
Tools
The night before her marriage to Darnay, Lucie sits at home with her father. She presses him on whether he truly feels comfortable with her marrying, reassuring him that “no new affections […] will ever interpose between [them]” (195).
Manette in turn tells his daughter that he would not be happy knowing that he stood between Lucie and the life she deserves. Pointing to the moon, he describes how he used to stare at it in prison, mentally drawing lines across it to occupy himself. His thoughts also turned often to his wife and child, wondering whether they were alive and what the future held in store for them: “I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank” (196). Lucie grows distressed, but her father continues, explaining that at other times he imagined his grown daughter coming to his cell and leading him out of it to a home where his memory is respected and passed on to his descendants. When Lucie says that she hopes she is “that child” (196), Manette blesses her, and assures her that his happiness far exceeds anything he imagined while in prison.
Manette and Lucie then have dinner with Miss Pross. Late that night, Lucie wakes up and visits her father’s room, where she finds him sleeping peacefully, and says a prayer over him.
On the morning of the wedding, Manette and Darnay speak privately together while Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross admire Lucie. Miss Pross cries tears of joy, and Lorry marvels at all that has happened since he first brought Lucie to England. He also remarks that the marriage makes him think of all the opportunities he himself has missed in life, causing Miss Pross to retort that he was “a bachelor in [his] cradle” (200). Finally, Lorry assures Lucie that he and Miss Pross will look after her father for the first two weeks of her marriage, after which Manette will join the couple on their honeymoon.
The ceremony and wedding breakfast go smoothly, and Manette sees his daughter and son-in-law off. He had looked “deadly pale” (201) after his earlier meeting with Darnay, however, and as soon as the newlyweds are gone, he grows more distracted and agitated. Lorry and Miss Pross decide to give him space to recover, but when Lorry stops by after work later that day, Miss Pross anxiously reports that Manette has taken up his shoemaking once again and doesn’t recognize her.
Lorry visits Manette but is also unable to rouse him. He and Miss Pross decide to keep Manette’s state a secret from both Lucie and his patients, saying simply that he is unwell. In the meantime, Lorry takes time off from Tellson’s to sit with Manette in “silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen” (204). He and Miss Pross take turns speaking gently to Manette of familiar people and things and offer opportunities to leave the room if he wants to. Although Manette sometimes shows interest in what’s going on around him, he persists in his shoemaking for nine days, by which point “the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skillful, and […] had never been so intent on his work” (205).
On the morning of the tenth day, Lorry visits Manette’s room and finds him calmly reading. Together with Miss Pross, he decides not to bring up Manette’s episode, and the household goes about its normal morning routine. After breakfast, however, Lorry decides to seek Manette’s professional advice on the situation; he doesn’t refer to Manette by name but describes a “curious case” involving an “old and prolonged shock […] to the affections, the feelings, […] the mind” (207). After apparently recovering, this “particularly dear friend” (207) of Lorry’s suddenly relapsed for nine days. Under the guise of talking someone else, Manette questions Lorry about the case, and learns that Lucie hasn’t been told anything.
Lorry then comes to the point, and asks Manette what caused the relapse, whether it might happen again, and what could be done to prevent it. Manette suggests that there was “a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady” (209). He also says, however, that he doesn’t think another relapse is likely, since it is only one particular topic that brings the episodes on. He therefore rejects Lorry’s idea that “overwork” (210) might have contributed to the problem; in fact, he says, the distraction work provides likely prevents worse episodes from occurring. Reluctantly, however, he does admit that it may be best to remove the shoemaking tools (or, as Lorry puts it, the “blacksmith’s forge”) from his home. He asks, however, that this not be done while he is present.
That being the case, Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross wait for Doctor Manette to join Lucie and Darnay. They then burn or bury all the Doctor’s shoemaking tools: “In a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker’s bench to pieces, while Miss press held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder” (212).
As soon as the newlyweds return to London, Carton pays Darnay a visit. He tells Darnay that he wishes to be something like friends and expresses regret for a “drunken occasion” when he “was insufferable about liking [Darnay], and not liking [him]” (215). Darnay politely tries to wave these admissions aside, but, seeing how earnest Carton is, finally assures him that he only feels gratitude towards him for saving his life. Carton in turn dismisses this, calling it “mere professional claptrap,” and then comes to his point: although he knows he is “incapable of all the higher and better flights of men” (215), he wants to be allowed to visit the Darnays sometimes. He promises he will not “abuse the permission,” and says that the Darnays should consider him “an useless […] piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service and taken no notice of” (216). Darnay agrees, and Carton leaves.
At dinner that day, Darnay begins to talk about Carton’s “carelessness and recklessness” (216) while recounting their earlier conversation. Later that night, he notices that Lucie seems troubled, and she eventually tells her husband that she wishes Darnay would speak more kindly of Carton: “I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very, seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it” (217). She further explains that although Carton may never live up to his full potential, “he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things” (217) and should be pitied rather than condemned. Darnay is surprised but regrets any pain he has caused Carton and agrees to do as Lucie asks.
Doctor Manette’s relapse casts a pall over the otherwise happy moment of Lucie and Darnay’s wedding. It’s also a reminder that Manette’s “resurrection” is incomplete, and that the personality of the “shoemaker” that he developed in prison is always waiting to reemerge. In a sense, Manette has traded physical imprisonment for mental imprisonment, and although he eventually extricates himself from the episode, he makes it clear that there is no easy way out of these states; when Lorry asks whether he wouldn’t “be sensibly relieved if he could prevail upon himself to impart the that secret brooding to any one, when it is on him,” Manette replies that reaching outside of himself in those moments is “next to impossible” (209).
In this respect, Manette has something in common with Carton, who is similarly isolated and trapped inside his own mind. Carton, however, so rarely manages to emerge from the “cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadow[s] him” (155), that Darnay is “astounded” (217) to learn that Carton has any kind of inner life beyond what he shows in public. In fact, it’s telling that even Lucie, who has seen Carton at his best, says she “fear[s] he is not to be reclaimed” (217). Ultimately, of course, Carton is not only “reclaimed” but greatly surpasses any expectations anyone had of him, proving once again that “every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other” (14).
Another point of similarity between Carton and Manette is the relationship of each man to Lucie. Dickens insists throughout the novel that it is only through Lucie’s influence that Manette has managed to (mostly) recover, and it is that same “sweet compassion” (156) that inspires Carton to make the sacrifice that redeems him. It’s noteworthy, then, that Manette’s account of his thoughts in prison in many ways echoes what Carton has previously said about his “name, and faults, and miseries” being “gently carried in [Lucie’s] heart” (158). Manette describes imagining his then unknown daughter living in a home “full of her loving remembrance of her lost father […] Her life was active, cheerful, cheerful, and useful; but my poor history pervaded it all” (197). This, then, is another way in which Lucie’s goodness redeems those around her: by transforming their suffering into another instance of her compassion.
By Charles Dickens