Charles+Dickens+&+the+French+Revolution

**Discuss Charles Dickens’ attitude toward the French Revolution – use specific examples from //A Tale of Two Cities// to support your view.** (initial & cite source)

Les Miserables: - Jean Valjean was so desperate that he stole food for his starving nephews and neices. This was accurately portrayed because during the French Revolution, people did not have enough food (Hugo 24). - The women's march to Versailles corresponds to that because they demanded bread for their starving families (Spielvogel 534). - Barricade with the Revolutionaries that were against the Loyalists. They were always being kicked out of the parks when they tried to protest (movie). -according to cliffs notes, there is a character named Marius' father who was a hero in the Napoleonic wars showing that it was post of the Napoleon Era. -seems to be part of the earlier moments of the French Revolution because Jean Valjean was realeased for his crimes. In the later years of the revolution, Robespierre would sentence almost anyone to kill anyone and it did not matter what the social class the person is in. Proof is from the book on page 539 where it stated that novles were only eight percent of the vitims, middle class ws 25 percent, clergy ws 6 percent, peasants and laboring classes was 60 percent -there is a part in the movie where a group of revolutionists are attempting to rally up people to fight for a new cause and was against royalty

Tale of Two Cities: - On July 14, 1789, the Bastille was attacked as an uprising to steal arms and free prisoners. Louis XVI was forced to stop the rebellion (Spielvogel 530). In the book, the storming of the Bastille was very violent and was done out of revenge against the nobles (Dickens 221). - Wine spreading symbolizes the bloodshed and many deaths during the revolution (Dickens 25). - Reign of Terror was partially shown. Evremonde was sent to be placed on trial, but he escaped, which was very rare during the real revolution (Dickens 348). - The anger people felt against the monarchy was similar to how Madame Defarge felt against nobles (Dickens 363). - Only killed nobles in the book showing that the book was relating to the beginning of the revolution and not near the end, where even citizens of France were killed. An example would be that a teenager who was killed for chopping down a tree that was planted during the French Revolution (JLeong). -the book seems to exagerate that only nobles were attacked while in reality nobles were only eight percent of the people killed proved on page, biased in a sense that he only focused on nobles being killed (Ellen Mok, Stephanie Tran, Jessica Hom, Emily Cheng)