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A Tale of Two Cities Chapter 7 Monseigneur in Town. Main Characters. Monsignor – A rich noble who was one of the great lords of the court. Farmer General- Handles Monsignor's finances. Monsieur Orleans- Professor of the provinces.
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Main Characters Monsignor – A rich noble who was one of the great lords of the court. Farmer General- Handles Monsignor's finances. Monsieur Orleans- Professor of the provinces. Marquis Evremonde - Charles Darnay’s uncle, the Marquis Evremonde is a French aristocrat who embodies an inhumanly cruel caste system. He shows absolutely no regard for human life and wishes that the peasants of the world would be exterminated. Gaspard- The father of the boy who dies. Monsieur Defarge Madame Defarge
Settings Beginning of the chapter takes place in a Grand Hotel in Paris. On the streets of Paris in front of Monsieur Defarge’s wine shop.
Plot Monsignor is throwing a reception with 1,700 people. Farmer-General is there in the outer rooms. Everyone was dressed and powdered and looked as if they were at a Fancy Ball. Monsignor is so rich and stuck up that he eats chocolate every morning which 4 strong men and a chef have to make before he will even but it to his mouth. He says “The Earth and the fullness there of are mine” He parades around his guests briefly and then returns to his sanctuary never to be seen the whole night. Everyone leaves and one man with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed some mirrors on his way out and said “I devote you, to the Devil!”
Plot cont. The man’s name was Marquis Evremonde. When he left the reception he orders his carriage to be raced through the city streets. He found it amusing to see the peasants nearly run down by his horses. Suddenly the carriage jolts to a stop, and a child lies dead under his wheels. The boy’s father (Gaspard) is next to him in terror. The Marquis came out of his carriage and said “It is extraordinary to me, that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done to my horses? See! Give him that.” Marquis Evremonde throws a coin to the boy’s father.
Plot cont. Defarge came out of his wine shop and tried to comfort Gaspard. Marquis threw Defarge a coin also and asked if his horses were okay again. Marquis drove off, and a coin came flying back through the air into his carriage. He stops the carriage and says “You dogs! I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the Earth.” This entire time Madame Defarge watches the scene, knitting.
Main Characters • Monsignor • Gabelle • Gaspard • Marquis Evremonde • Defarge
Settings • The Marquis is traveling from Paris to the Evremonde country estate, and he rides through a landscape of withered crops.
Main Plot Points • A road mender claims he saw a man riding under the carriage, but he is no longer there. • He alerted the village official, Gabelle, to be on the lookout for the mystery man. • Before he reaches the estate, a grief-stricken woman stops him at the graveyard and begs him for a marker for the grave of her dead husband.
Characters • Charles Darnay (Nephew) • Monsieur Marquis • Monsieur Gabelle
Setting • Marquis’s chateau – Late at night and early the next morning. • Near by village – Early the next morning.
Plot/Summary • That night, at the Marquis’s chateau, Charles Darnay, the nephew of the Marquis, arrives by carriage. • Darnay tells his uncle that he wants to renounce the title and property that he stands to inherit when the Marquis dies. • The family’s name, Darnay contends, is associated with “fear and slavery.” • He insists that the family has consistently acted shamefully, “injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure.” • The Marquis dismisses these protests, urging his nephew to accept his “natural destiny.”
Summary/Plot • The next morning, the Marquis is found dead with a knife through his heart. • Attached to the knife is a note that reads: • “Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.”
Characters • Charles Darnay • Dr. Manette
Setting • Dr. Manette’s home in London
Plot • A year later, Darnay makes a moderate living as a French teacher in London. • He visits Doctor Manette and admits his love for Lucie. • He honors Manette’s special relationship with his daughter, assuring him that his own love for Lucie will in no way disturb that bond. • Manette applauds Darnay for speaking so “feelingly and so manfully” and asks if he can seek a promise from him. • Darnay asks Manette to promise to vouch for the true nature of his love should Lucie ever ask. • Manette promises as much.
Chapter 10 – Plot Points • Wanting to be worthy of his confidence, Darnay attempts to tell Manette his real name, confessing that it is not Darnay. • Manette stops him short, making him promise to reveal his name only if he proves successful in his courtship. • He will hear Darnay’s secret on his wedding day. • Hours later, after Darnay has left, Lucie hears her father cobbling away at his shoemaker’s bench. • Frightened by his relapse, she watches him as he sleeps that night.
Chapter 11: A Companion Picture
Characters Charles Darnay Sydney Carton
Setting Stryver’s Chambers
Main Plot Points • Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton are in Stryver’s chambers talking when Stryver tells Carton to mix some more punch because he needs to tell him something. • Carton, who is already drunk, makes some more punch as directed and then ask what he wanted to tell him. • Stryver tells Carton he intends to marry. • After talking for a couple minutes Stryvertells Carton he intends to marry Lucie Manette.
Chapter 12 The Fellow of Delicacy
Major Characters • Mr. Stryver • Mr. Lorry
Setting • Soho • Tellson’s Bank
Plot • The day after the night that Stryver and Carton were talking about Stryver’s intentions to propose, Stryver plans to take Lucie to the Vauxhall Gardens to make his marriage proposal. • On his way, he drops by Tellson’s Bank to inform Mr. Lorry of what he is going to do. • Mr. Lorry tries to convince him to postpone the proposal until he knows for a fact she will say yes. • He asks Stryver to hold off the proposal for a few hours so he can consult the family and see what they think of Stryver.
Plot continued.. • Lorry visits Stryver that night and confirms that if he would have proposed the Manettes would have rejected his offer. • Stryver dismisses the entire affair as one of the “vanities” of “empty-headed girls” and begs Lorry to forget it.
Main Characters • Sydney Carton • Dr. Manette • Mr. Stryver • Miss Manette Setting • Dr. Manette's house
Main Plot • Sydney Carton enters the Manette's house on one August day and speaks to Lucie alone. • She listens to what he has to say. • He tells her how his life is wasted, complaining that he shall never receive a life than the one he now lives. • Lucie assures him that he might become much worthier of himself. • She believes that her tenderness can save him.
Main Plot • Carton insists that he has declined beyond salvation but admits that he has always viewed Lucie as "the last dream of {his} soul.“ • She has mentioned to him considering beginning his life again, though he no longer believes in the possibility of doing so. • He feels happy to have admitted this much to Lucie and to know that something remains in him that still deserves pity. • Carton ends his confession to Lucie Carton ends his confession with a pledge that he would do anything for Lucie, including give his life.
Chapter 14 The Honest Tradesman
Main characters • Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher • Young Jerry • Mrs. Cruncher
Settings • Fleet Street • Jerry Cruncher’s house • A graveyard
Main plot points • Jerry Cruncher is sitting on a stool outside Tellson’s bank with his son. He watches the funeral procession for Roger Cly(Charles Darnay’s former servant who stood witness against him earlier in the novel). • A mob follows the funeral, shouting “Spies! Pull’em out, there!” • Dickens observes, “A crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded.” • Cruncher joins the crowd as they march to the cemetery. They become violent, breaking windows and looting before breaking up. • Cruncher and his son return home. His wife asks if he is going to be “going out to-night.” He does. He takes a sack, a crowbar, and some rope and chain. • His curious son follows him. His father had said he would be going fishing, but as his son sneakily follows him, he watches his father go to the graveyard and begin digging up a grave. Young Jerry runs home horrified.
Plot Cont. • In the morning, Mr. Cruncher and Mrs. Cruncher get into a argument about “this dreadful business” because he says she shouldn’t disagree with the way he’s getting money. • He tells her that she should not oppose her husband’s business. • Young Jerry asks his father what a “resurrection-man” is. • Mr. Cruncher responds that a “resurrection-man” is an honest tradesman whose goods are “person’s bodies.”
Characters • Defarge • Madame Defarge • The Jacques
Settings • Paris—St. Antoinne • The garret where Dr. Manettewas hidden at the beginning of the novel.
Plot • Defargeenters his wine-shop with a mender of roads, whom he refers to as “Jacques.” • Three men file out of the shop individually. Eventually, Defarge and the mender of roads climb up to the garret where Doctor Manette had been hidden. They are joined by the three men who recently exited the shop, and whom Defarge also calls “Jacques.” • The mender of roads reports that, a year ago, he saw a man hanging by a chain underneath the Marquis’ carriage (the man was Gaspard, the dead child’s father). • He says he saw the man again several months later, being marched along the road by soldiers. The soldiers led the man to prison, where he remained “in his iron cage” for several days. • The mender says he does not know what became of this man, but according to rumor, petitions soon arrived in Paris begging that the prisoner’s life be spared. • He wonders if the petition spared the man’s life. • One of the Jacques tells him that a petition was presented to the King, by none other than Ernest Defarge. The petition was ignored. Workmen built a 40 foot gallows in the middle of town where the man was soon hanged.
Plot Cont. • Defargeasks the mender of roads to wait outside a moment. • The other Jacques call for the extermination of the entire aristocracy, including the entire Evremonde family (Charles Darnay). • One points to the knitting-work of Madame Defarge, where she has been hiding a code in the stitching. The code contains an elaborate registry of the names of those whom the revolutionaries aim to kill– a hit list. • He asks if the Madame Defarge will always be able to decipher the names that appear there. She affirms that she will. • Later that week, Defarge and his wife take the mender of roads to Versailles to see King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. • When the royal couple appears, the mender of roads cries “Long live the King!” and becomes so excited that Defarge must “restrain him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.” • This performance pleases the Defarges, who see that their efforts will prove easier if the aristocrats continue to believe in the peasantry’sallegiance.
Characters • Madame Defarge • Monsieur Defarge • Jacques • Barsard
Chapter 16 - Setting • Paris – St. Antoinne
Plot • The mood in St. Antoine has changed; it now bears a “cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear forever.” • The Defarge’s make a trip to Paris to speak with “Jacques of the police.” The policeman warns Defarge that a spy by the name of John Barsardhas been sent to their neighborhood. He is described as “a rather handsome” man whose nose has a “peculiar inclination towards the left cheek.” • The Defarges return to the wineshop. • Madame Defarge resolves to knit Barsard’s name into the register. That night, Defarge admits his fear that the revolution will not come in his lifetime. Madame Defarge dismisses his impatience and compares the revolution to lightning and an earthquake: • “it strikes quickly and with great force, but no one knows how long it will take to form.”
Plot Cont. • The next day, in the wine shop, various Jacques are sitting around talking when a man enters the wine shop. It is Barsard. Madame Defarge puts a rose in her hat; the conversations break up, and the Jacques slowly disperse. • Barsard speaks with Madame Defarge, he asks her about her family, trying to get her to say something incriminating. He masquerades as a sympathizer with the revolutionaries and comments on the horrible treatment of the peasants. • While he speaks to her, Madame Defarge knits his name into her registry. • Knowing that Ernest Defarge once worked as Doctor Manette’s servant, he reports that Lucie Manette plans to marry, and that her husband is to be the Marquis’ nephew, Darnay. He wonders if they have kept in touch. Madame Defarge tells him that they have not. Barsard leaves. • Ernest Defarge tells his wife that he hopes the Manettes, Lucie, and Darnay stay out of France if the revolution ever comes. Madame Defarge reminds him that Darnay and his entire family are registered in her knitting. • The chapter ends with Madame Defarge and the other women, “knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.”
Characters • Doctor Manette • Lucie Manette
