A Tale of Two Cities
Lucie and her father talk of his past suffering
Darnay tells Dr. Manette his true identity and the Dr. is greatly affected
Lucie and Darnay are married and as soon as they leave on their honeymoon, Dr. Manette reverts to his old insanity and constant shoemaking for 9 days.
Lorry discusses the relapse with Dr. Manette and decides to destroy the shoe making bench. Thinks there will not be a relapse.
158- murder the bench
Carton goes to Darnay to apologize for his past rudeness and to ask to be friends. Why?
Darnay is polite, but later discusses Carton as “a problem of carelessness and recklessness.”
Lucie says to Darnay 160-161 “I think , Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and respect than you expressed for him tonight . . . I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals and there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding. . . I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things.” Why does Lucie care so much? Why is she so kind? What does it indicate about Darnay that he agrees and asks no questions?
What is Carton’s story? Why does he have so much potential, yet do so little. Do you think he will redeem himself? Will he change?
Lucie and Darnay have two children: Little Lucie and a baby boy who dies young
Carton visits every other month or so
163: “her children had a strange sympathy with him—an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. . . Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. ‘Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!”
Stryver marries a wealthy, but coarse woman with three sons. And tells all the story of how Lucie tried to trap him into marriage but that he luckily escaped her grasp. Irony
Little Lucie is 6 and things are looking bad in France 1789