A Tale Of Two CitiesEssay Preview: A Tale Of Two CitiesReport this essayAs its title promises, this brief chapter establishes the era in which the novel takes place: England and France in 1775. The age is marked by competing and contradictory attitudes–“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”–but resembles the “present period” in which Dickens writes. In England, the public worries over religious prophecies, popular paranormal phenomena in the form of “the Cock-lane ghost,” and the messages that a colony of British subjects in America has sent to King George III. France, on the other hand, witnesses excessive spending and extreme violence, a trend that anticipates the erection of the guillotine. Yet in terms of peace and order, English society cannot “justify much national boasting” either–crime and capital punishment abound.
Although the book begins with a brief (and, unfortunately, very short) overview of France and ends with the discovery of the American colonies”the book takes up a major portion of the year during the reign of John Taylor and John Henry Taylor. A few chapters contain brief comments from the author about his time in France, as well as on the French Revolution. All of this leads directly to the conclusion of a short period in which most Americans see a better future for Americans’ futures than we know. But it’s hard not to wonder whether its influence should be viewed in some light — or, as the author writes, ‘what was the present moment of European liberty?’
After all, an influential British observer of the American Revolution, Arthur C. Clarke, was right to point to the great upheaval of 1789-89 to suggest, as he put it, the ‘dangerous character of the people” to which many others were subjected.
The book proceeds through a series of important observations about the development of the American people in 1789-89. For instance, the American Colonists were a diverse movement; their members were, almost exclusively, white, in 1825-26 and their civil rights were not recognized till 1898; and many more people died in military internment camps and slave camps than at any other time in America.
Not all of the colonists were equally well-off, but some in particular benefited from a wide swath of prosperity, and the prosperity did not last. Indeed, one might read the first 1826 book, ” as an introduction, the second is an excellent treatise on government spending (of which a great deal is written in this edition), and the third is a particularly important essay on the causes of the Great Depression.
And in terms of political liberty, as well as the possibility of economic progress,
a very good essay from history.ua. and history.ua. -]
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