The Thread
This is a full summary of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, with full spoilers. It gives away the last page, and the last page is famous, so I will say it plainly: one man dies in another man’s place.
Here is the idea. Dickens split his novel into three books, and each has a title. Book the First is Recalled to Life. Book the Second is the Golden Thread. Book the Third is the Track of a Storm. The golden thread is the best known phrase of the three, and it is in the story text only four times, all in the middle book. I counted.
So here is my short answer. In my reading, the thread is Lucie Manette, and what she holds together is a family. The storm is the French Revolution, and it tears through that family in Book the Third. And Sydney Carton spends the novel as the double of the man Lucie marries, until the double is needed.
The Edition And The Shape
I am using Project Gutenberg ebook number ninety-eight, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. It has forty-five chapters: six in Book the First, twenty-four in Book the Second and fifteen in Book the Third. My counts cover the chapter text only, about one hundred thirty-six thousand words, with the legal text left out. A word is anything between spaces.
The books are very unequal. Book the First is about seventeen thousand words, thirteen percent. Book the Second is about seventy thousand, fifty-two percent. Book the Third is about forty-eight thousand, thirty-five percent. The quiet middle book is more than half the novel.
The years are on the page. Book the First is November, seventeen seventy-five. Book the Second opens in seventeen eighty, then reaches mid-July seventeen eighty-nine and August seventeen ninety-two. Book the Third starts that autumn, and prison takes one year and three months of it.
Book The First, Recalled To Life
Book the First has six chapters. It opens with the most famous sentence in the novel, best of times, worst of times, in seventeen seventy-five,.
In chapter two, the Dover mail climbs a hill on a Friday night in November. A messenger hands Mr. Jarvis Lorry, of Tellson’s Bank, a note, and Lorry sends back an answer that makes no sense to anyone: recalled to life. In chapter three he dreams of digging a man out of a grave, buried almost eighteen years. In chapter four, at Dover, he tells Lucie Manette that her father, whom she thought dead, is alive in Paris.
Chapters five and six take them to Saint Antoine, where a wine cask has broken in the street. Monsieur and Madame Defarge keep the wine shop, and they lead Lorry and Lucie up to a garret. A white-haired Doctor Manette is making shoes and can only say One Hundred and Five, North Tower. Lucie takes him away that night, and Madame Defarge watches them go, knitting.
Here is the first count. In the story text of Book the First, recalled to life appears five times, plus twice in the book’s title. Book the Second uses it once, and Book the Third once. And look at the names. Darnay, Carton and Stryver never appear in Book the First, and Lucie is Miss Manette all the way through it.
Book The Second, Two Men On Trial
Book the Second jumps five years. In chapters two and three, Charles Darnay is on trial at the Old Bailey for treason, accused of passing English secrets to the French king. Lorry, Lucie and her father are witnesses, because they all crossed the Channel with him on that night in seventeen seventy-five.
His lawyer is Mr. Stryver. Stryver’s colleague Sydney Carton sends him a note, and the note is the point of the whole novel. Carton looks so much like Darnay that no witness can swear which man they saw. The text says they are so like each other in feature, so unlike in manner. Darnay is acquitted.
Afterward Carton asks him in a tavern, do you think I particularly like you? In chapters seven to nine the story crosses to France. A marquis’s carriage kills a child, and a woman stands knitting and watches. The marquis is Darnay’s uncle. Darnay renounces his family, and the marquis is found stabbed, with a note: drive him fast to his tomb.
Now the twin count. By surname, Darnay is named one hundred four times in Book the Second and forty-four in Book the Third. Carton is named seventy times, then eighty-seven. Darnay leads the middle book. Carton leads the last.
The Wedding And The Thread
In chapter ten, Darnay asks Doctor Manette for his blessing, and the Doctor promises that Lucie will be his if she chooses him. In chapter thirteen, Carton tells Lucie he loves her and that nothing can come of it. He says he would give his life, to keep a life you love. Remember that line.
Chapter fourteen is a dark joke. Jerry Cruncher, a Tellson’s messenger, robs graves at night, and his son asks what a Resurrection-Man is. That is the first appearance of the word resurrection.
Chapters fifteen and sixteen are Knitting and Still Knitting. Madame Defarge keeps a register of enemies in her stitches. By my count, knit, knitting or knitted appears nine times in Book the First, thirty-eight in Book the Second and twenty-one in Book the Third, a few of them only knitted brows.
The wedding comes in chapter eighteen. As soon as Lucie leaves, the Doctor falls back into shoemaking, and it lasts nine days.
Bastille And Loadstone
Chapter twenty-one is where the golden thread peaks. Lucie sits in the echoing corner house, busily winding the golden thread that binds her husband, her father and herself. The phrase appears twice there, once in chapter twenty-four, and once back in chapter four. That is all four.
Outside, in mid-July seventeen eighty-nine, the Defarges help storm the Bastille, and Defarge searches cell One Hundred and Five, North Tower. Soon after, a chateau burns.
Chapter twenty-four ends the book. It is August seventeen ninety-two. A letter reaches Darnay from Gabelle, the postmaster of the family’s old village, now in prison and begging for help. Darnay feels guilty and leaves for Paris on the fourteenth of August. The chapter is called Drawn to the Loadstone Rock, and the golden thread never appears again.
Book The Third, The Track Of A Storm
Darnay is stopped at every gate, called an emigrant, and locked in La Force. Lucie and her father arrive in Paris, where Lorry is at the bank’s Paris house. Doctor Manette, the old Bastille prisoner, tells Lorry he has a charmed life in this city, and he spends it on Darnay.
Madame Defarge visits Lucie, knitting, and points her needle at little Lucie like the finger of Fate. Chapter five opens with the number: one year and three months.
In chapter six, every voice at the tribunal is for Darnay, and the crowd carries him home. In chapter seven, that same night, four men knock and arrest him again. Who denounced him? The Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. And one other.
The Paper And The Plan
In chapter eight, Miss Pross meets her lost brother Solomon. He is now the spy Barsad, the same man from the Old Bailey. Carton recognises him and holds two cards: his English spying, and Roger Cly, who faked his own death.
In chapters nine and ten, the tribunal hears a paper that Doctor Manette wrote in his cell in seventeen sixty-seven, about a night ten years before. Two noble brothers dragged him to a dying peasant girl and her dying brother, and then locked him away. He denounced them and their whole race. That race is Darnay’s. He is condemned to die within a day.
In chapter twelve, Carton sits in the Defarge wine shop and hears Madame Defarge say that the peasant family in that paper is her own. The girl was her sister. Carton makes his plan with Lorry: a coach ready at two o’clock, and papers for the Manettes.
Here is the last count. The word resurrection appears twice in Book the Second, in the grave-robber joke. In Book the Third it appears four times, all from Carton, who says it three times in chapter nine, walking through the night.
Fifty-Two
Chapter thirteen is called Fifty-Two, the number condemned that day, as many as weeks in the year. Carton goes into the prison and makes Darnay swap boots, cravat and coat. He holds a drug under his nose until Darnay falls insensible, and the Spy has him carried out. A young seamstress asks Carton, are you dying for him? He says, hush, yes.
In chapter fourteen, Madame Defarge goes to Lucie’s rooms with a loaded pistol. Miss Pross, who has never struck anyone, stops her at the door. The pistol goes off in the struggle and kills Madame Defarge, and the blast leaves Pross deaf for good. The coach leaves Paris with the Manettes, Lorry and the drugged Darnay.
In chapter fifteen, the knitting women count the heads. The seamstress is twenty-two. Carton is twenty-three. His last words in the book are a far, far better thing that I do.
What It Means
These readings are opinion, so I will say in my reading. The three titles make a path. A man is brought back to life, a thread holds a household together, and a storm cuts through it. Then Carton reverses the first title. A man who thought his own life was wasted says the words about resurrection and spends it to keep a life she loves.
The trick is the resemblance. Dickens plants it in the ninth chapter of the novel, at the Old Bailey, and cashes it in at chapter forty-three.
So who is it for? Read it if you like long plots that pay off. Skip it if Victorian setups try your patience. My pick is Book the Second for the people, and Book the Third for the pace.
Which Book Is Yours
Which book is your favourite, the First, the Second or the Third? Tell me in the comments, and tell me whether you saw the swap coming.
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