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Aug. 12th, 2010 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo I seem to vaguely remember from the last time one of those 100 Great Books/Classics/Randomly Chosen Pieces of Literature memes went out seeing a lot of Dickens hate around my reading list. And I kind of hunched my head over and felt awkward and lonely, because, while I totally get it . . . I kind of love Dickens? In that way where you love things that were written by middle-class dead white guys who were paid by the word, but also in that way where you love things that are built on a mixture of hilarious satire and hilarious sentimentality and memorable characters and people occasionally bursting spontaneously into flames.
For all my love, though, it has been a while since I've actually read any Dickens! And I actually missed out completely on A Tale of Two Cities in my youth, and it seemed to be the focal point of a lot of dislike at the time, so last week I decided to regress to high school and pick it back up.
A Tale of Two Cities is kind of weird, because the half that is set in London is pretty typical Dickens - satiric, witty, lots of banker and lawyer jokes - and the half that is set in Paris is all DOOM DOOM BLOOD DOOM TRAGEDY BLOOD MELODRAMA DID I MENTION DOOM. The coolest characters of course are the antagonists, Madame Defarge and Sydney Carton. Well, okay, the Reader's Guide in the back of my one-dollar used-bookstore copy claims Sydney Carton as an antagonist. I am kind of dubious about this. This is what we are presented with as the Tragedy of Sydney Carton:
SYDNEY CARTON: I am depraved and debauched! I love you but I will never ask to marry you because I could only lead you into a miserable life of depraved debauchery.
THE PURE LOVE INTEREST: . . . really? Because, I mean, you have a pretty respectable job as a lawyer's assistant, and -
SYDNEY CARTON: Do not hope to redeem me! I am beyond hope.
THE PURE LOVE INTEREST: Do you have some dark secret in your past or something? Because -
SYDNEY CARTON: Well, I'm an underachiever and I get drunk sometimes. And that one time, I told your boyfriend I didn't like him! For no good reason.
THE PURE LOVE INTEREST: Look, dude, over in the other half the plot in France, we've got rebellion and rape and murder and aristocrats squashing small children in their carriages of decadence, so if you really want me to consider you a tragic villain you might want to ramp it up a little.
SYDNEY CARTON: Please stop trying to convince me I could be anything other than a villain! Just remember me sympathetically once in a while as I continue my epic downward spiral into a lonely grave, that is all I ask -
THE PURE LOVE INTEREST: Okay, I will go on remembering you as a middle-class lawyer's assistant. But look, are you sure there's no dark secret in your tragc past here? Because there is that whole thing about how you look creepily like my husband, and -
SYDNEY CARTON: No, I'm pretty sure we're just never going to explain that.
I like Sydney Carton - I especially like his habit of totally drugging the kind of boring and oblivious Actual Hero when it looks like Actual Hero is going to inconveniently get in the way of his own rescue; it shows good sense and practicality! - but half the reason that I find him interesting is because as far as I can tell there is pretty much nothing in his life to justify all his very dramatic self-loathing. I can only make sense of him if I assume he is somewhere on the depressive spectrum, which is sort of an interesting deconstruction of the character type, in a way.
Meanwhile, as far as Merciless Knitter of the Revolution Madame Defarge goes, I just spent the whole book passionately shipping her with her lieutenant-sidekick La Vengeance.
But okay, while I am on the topic of Dickens, I am kind of curious here, so:
[Poll #1604945]
For all my love, though, it has been a while since I've actually read any Dickens! And I actually missed out completely on A Tale of Two Cities in my youth, and it seemed to be the focal point of a lot of dislike at the time, so last week I decided to regress to high school and pick it back up.
A Tale of Two Cities is kind of weird, because the half that is set in London is pretty typical Dickens - satiric, witty, lots of banker and lawyer jokes - and the half that is set in Paris is all DOOM DOOM BLOOD DOOM TRAGEDY BLOOD MELODRAMA DID I MENTION DOOM. The coolest characters of course are the antagonists, Madame Defarge and Sydney Carton. Well, okay, the Reader's Guide in the back of my one-dollar used-bookstore copy claims Sydney Carton as an antagonist. I am kind of dubious about this. This is what we are presented with as the Tragedy of Sydney Carton:
SYDNEY CARTON: I am depraved and debauched! I love you but I will never ask to marry you because I could only lead you into a miserable life of depraved debauchery.
THE PURE LOVE INTEREST: . . . really? Because, I mean, you have a pretty respectable job as a lawyer's assistant, and -
SYDNEY CARTON: Do not hope to redeem me! I am beyond hope.
THE PURE LOVE INTEREST: Do you have some dark secret in your past or something? Because -
SYDNEY CARTON: Well, I'm an underachiever and I get drunk sometimes. And that one time, I told your boyfriend I didn't like him! For no good reason.
THE PURE LOVE INTEREST: Look, dude, over in the other half the plot in France, we've got rebellion and rape and murder and aristocrats squashing small children in their carriages of decadence, so if you really want me to consider you a tragic villain you might want to ramp it up a little.
SYDNEY CARTON: Please stop trying to convince me I could be anything other than a villain! Just remember me sympathetically once in a while as I continue my epic downward spiral into a lonely grave, that is all I ask -
THE PURE LOVE INTEREST: Okay, I will go on remembering you as a middle-class lawyer's assistant. But look, are you sure there's no dark secret in your tragc past here? Because there is that whole thing about how you look creepily like my husband, and -
SYDNEY CARTON: No, I'm pretty sure we're just never going to explain that.
I like Sydney Carton - I especially like his habit of totally drugging the kind of boring and oblivious Actual Hero when it looks like Actual Hero is going to inconveniently get in the way of his own rescue; it shows good sense and practicality! - but half the reason that I find him interesting is because as far as I can tell there is pretty much nothing in his life to justify all his very dramatic self-loathing. I can only make sense of him if I assume he is somewhere on the depressive spectrum, which is sort of an interesting deconstruction of the character type, in a way.
Meanwhile, as far as Merciless Knitter of the Revolution Madame Defarge goes, I just spent the whole book passionately shipping her with her lieutenant-sidekick La Vengeance.
But okay, while I am on the topic of Dickens, I am kind of curious here, so:
[Poll #1604945]
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Date: 2010-08-12 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-12 04:57 pm (UTC)