A Tale of Two Cities

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1859

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Book 2, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Book 2: “The Golden Thread”

Book 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Congratulatory”

Mr. Lorry, Doctor Manette, Lucie, and Mr. Stryver gather around Darnay to congratulate him, and Darnay in turn thanks Stryver for saving his life. Although Doctor Manette is by now largely recovered from his imprisonment, he is prone to moments of “abstraction that [overcloud] him fitfully, without any apparent reason” (82), and one of these moments occurs when he looks at Darnay. Lucie pulls him out of his daze, and both the Manettes and Stryver depart.

At this point, Carton appears, joking that Lorry can now safely talk to Darnay without fearing for his reputation. Lorry grows annoyed and, before leaving, scolds Carton for his laziness and disrespect. Carton, “smel[ling] of port wine” (86), then turns to Darnay and invites him to dine with him. As they settle down at a tavern, Carton asks in “his fully half-insolent manner” whether Darnay feels that he “belong[s] to this terrestrial scheme again” (87) and remarks bitterly that he himself takes little pleasure in being alive. He then presses Darnay to propose a toast to Lucie and—drinking more and more—declines to accept Darnay’s thanks for saving his life; in fact, he tells Darnay outright that he doesn’t like him.

Darnay—increasingly “disconcerted” (88) by Carton’s behavior—prepares to leave. Carton stops him before he can, though, and forces Darnay to acknowledge that Carton has been drinking heavily. This, he says, is because he is a lonely and “disappointed drudge” (89). Once Darnay is gone, Carton expands on this as he talks aloud to himself: “Why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that […] A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been!” (89). He eventually falls asleep at the table, and “a long winding-sheet in the candle drip[s] down upon him” (89).

Book 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “The Jackal”

The narrator reminds readers that his story is set in “drinking days” (89), when even “perfect gentlem[e]n” (90) drank heavily. This is true of Stryver, who is “fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice” (90) despite drinking whenever he settles down to go through legal papers. However, his success is also due in large part to the work Sydney Carton does for him; Stryver is not especially good at reading and understanding legal documents, but Carton is, and arranges most of Stryver’s cases for him.

On this particular night, Carton leaves the tavern and heads to Stryver’s rooms. Stryver ushers him in, hands over a set of papers for Carton to go through, and both men settle in for the evening:

Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a different way: [Stryver] for the most part reclining with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with some lighter document; [Carton], with knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass (92).

When Carton finishes “boiling down” a case in this way, he hands it over to Stryver: “At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him” (92).

Once the evening’s work is done, the two men discuss the day’s case; Stryver congratulates Carton for his winning strategy and wonders why Carton is in a bad mood. This in turn raises the issue of Carton’s habitual apathy and gloominess; Carton says it’s simply “[his] way” (93), remarking that he used to do other boys’ work for them in school, and Stryver urges Carton to look to him as a model of purposefulness and ambition. Although Carton sarcastically reminds Stryver that he himself has had a hand in the latter’s success, he is pessimistic about his own prospects in life. Stryver changes the topic, proposing a toast to the “pretty witness,” and Carton scoffs that Lucie is a “golden-haired doll” (94). He returns home shortly afterwards, where he “thr[ows] himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed” and cries (95).

Book 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Hundreds of People”

Four months after Darnay’s trial, Mr. Lorry goes to visit Doctor and Lucie Manette at their home, which is in a quiet area of London where “forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed” (96). The house, which also serves as an office for Manette, is peaceful and pleasant as well, largely thanks to Lucie’s skills as a housekeeper.

Neither Manette nor Lucie is home, but Lucie’s maid Miss Pross is, and complains to Lorry of the “hundreds” (99) of unworthy people who stop by to visit Lucie; even Manette, in her opinion, doesn’t truly deserve his daughter. Lorry is taken aback, but admires Miss Pross for her selfless devotion to her mistress. He is concerned about Manette, however, because he noticed that he still keeps his shoemaking tools in his bedroom. Miss Pross says Manette never talks about this, or the events that led to his imprisonment. She speculates that the topic frightens him: “Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again” (101-02). It’s clear that he often thinks about his imprisonment, because he often wakes up and paces in the middle of the night until Lucie calms him down.

Manette and Lucie return, and Mr. Lorry “thank[s] his bachelor stars for having lighted in his declining years to a Home” (103). He stays for dinner and drinks, at which point Darnay also shows up and begins talking to Manette about the Tower of London: while Darnay was imprisoned there, he heard that some workmen had come across remnants of a written message in one of the cells. Manette seems alarmed by this anecdote, but quickly recovers.

A thunderstorm rises as the group—now joined by Carton—sits down for tea. As they listen to the footsteps of people outside running for cover, Lucie remarks that she has “sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until [she has] made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-by into our lives” (106-07).

Lorry leaves for home when the rain dies down, accompanied for protection by Jerry Cruncher. Lorry remarks that it’s “almost a night […] to bring the dead out of their graves” (107)—something Jerry says he has never seen. The chapter ends with a reminder of “the great crowd of people with its rush and roar, bearing down upon [the Manettes and their friends]” (108).

Book 2, Chapters 4-6 Analysis

Although Carton remains an enigmatic character throughout the novel, the reasons for his apparent laziness, rudeness, and apathy become clearer in these chapters. Carton is (in modern terms) an alcoholic; although the narrator notes that excessive drinking was common at the time, Carton by his own admission drinks to dull his intense disappointment with life. This in turn suggests that Carton also suffers from what we’d now call depression. Despite (or perhaps because of) his deep self-disgust, Carton feels completely incapable of changing himself or his life for the better; the fact that he has worked hard his entire life for the benefit of others without ever advancing himself strongly suggests that he views himself as unworthy of “his own help and his own happiness” (95). The fact that this kind of imprisonment (as opposed to, for example, Doctor Manette’s) is basically of Carton’s own making doesn’t make it any less confining, since, as the narrator noted earlier in the novel, each individual person is ultimately isolated within his own “individuality” (15).

A Tale of Two Cities does ultimately suggest that there is a way around this isolation (and around Carton’s isolation in particular), which is where Carton’s feelings for Lucie come in. Although Carton mocks Stryver’s appreciation of Lucie’s beauty, he clearly was affected by her as well; when Darnay leaves him alone in the tavern, Carton bitterly laments that Lucie would never have “commiserated” (89)with him if he had had been the one on trial. Like Darnay himself, who reminds Carton of “what [he has] fallen away from” (89), Lucie’s goodness and purity speak to Carton’s nobler, idealistic side. Eventually, Carton’s love for Lucie (or perhaps what she represents) is what will redeem him.

Chapter 6, meanwhile, helps clarify why Lucie inspires this kind of devotion. When Lorry visits the Manettes’ home, he is deeply impressed by her ability to create an atmosphere of tranquility and happiness:

Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their origination, that, as Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved? (97-98).

Lorry’s sense that Lucie’s own character is imprinted on her surroundings helps explain why Dickens lingers on her skills as a housekeeper; by infusing everything around her with her own goodness, Lucie creates a refuge from the violence and oppression of the outside world.

However, this kind of domestic bliss can’t entirely ignore the world beyond it. In Chapter 6, the narrator draws attention to the fact that the Manettes’ house is situated in “a wonderful corner for echoes” (102), and Lucie herself associates the sound of people on the street outside with the people she will cross paths with later in life. The footsteps that appear throughout the novel are a warning of the ways in which fate and society can encroach on peaceful family life.

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