tale of two cities and rene girard

7/28/2019 Tale of Two Cities and Rene Girard

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Christianity and LiteratureVol. 59, No. 1 (Autumn 2009)

A Tale of Two M imeses:Dickens's A Tale of Tw o Cities and Ren Girard

Kevin Rulo

Though Wilkie Collins's The Frozen Deep and Thomas Carlyle's historyof the French Revolution are two important sources' for A Tale of TwoCities, Dickens's more general admission that "all my strongest illustrationsare derived from the New Testament" (qtd. in Ackroyd 504) should perhapsloom larger. Historical novel, socio-political reflection, A Tale of Two Citiessurely is.^ But it may also be profitably understood as a narrative mimesisof the Gospel texts. Such a mimetic impulse toward Bible narrative, andthe New Testament in particular,' is not confined in Dickens's oeuvre toA Tale of Two Cities. His The Life of the Lord represents the most obviousexample, but the Bible plays a formative narra tive, as well as them atic, rolein several other books."* Biblical-narrative mimesis can be rightly seen as apervasive textual strategy in Dickens's work as a whole. It is achieved in amost harm onious and masterful way, however, in A Tale.

Dickens's religious orientation and his use of Christianity havegenerally been seen, within the context of Victorian cultural developm ents,as a secularizing of the sacred and naturalizing of the supernatural. PeterAckroyd has referred in this connection to Dickens's faith as "establishedupon practical philanthropy and conventional morality," and his religionas one of "natural love and moral feeling" (507). This kind of readingwould see Dickens's m imetic desire toward Gospel discourse as a Victorianattempt at appropriating the m oral and ethical weight of the New Testamentin an increasingly scientific, mechanical, and empirically based society.^Although this secularization reading remains credible, the anthropology ofRen Girard may point to a more complex process: a stripping away of theritualistic crust of the Gospels to get at its core, mimetic desire, mimetic


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6 C H R I S T I A N I T Y A N D L I T E R A T U R E

as a mimesis of the structural principle of the Gospel texts. A Tale of TwoCities imitates the unique element of the Gospels, and of the Bible moregenerally, the manner in which they dramatize and expose the scapegoatmechanism.*

As Dickens's famous opening both parallels and contrasts "best" and"worst," "wisdom" and "foolishness," "belief" and "incredulity," "Light"and "Darkness," "spring of hope" and "winter of despair," "Heaven" and"the other way" (1.1.5)all binaries of the biblical traditionso toodoes the novel draw together and distinguish love and war in their mostprimordial and vital senses. Kenneth M. Sroka has written on the novel'sconnection with the Gospel of John, showing how both texts constructsimilar dichotomies of light and darkness, good and evil, progress andregression: "the movement opposing the progress from darkness to lightand lifelessness to resu rrection is, similarly, a dia-bolic counter-m ovem enttoward extermination' specifically personified in Madame ThrseDefarge and in the representative French aristocrats. Monseigneur andMonsieur the Marquis" (152). As Cirard might put it, in a way far moreamenable to Dickens's sensible religious naturalism, the novel representsthe dynamic of collective violence, mimetic contagion, but in contrast withthe foregrounding of mimetic war's opposite, conversionary mimesis andsacrificial renuncia tion. A nd just as in the Gospe ls, the h orro rs of collectiveviolence and murder are exposed for what they are by the transformativepower of agape, self-sacrificing love.

For those who see the violence of the novel as "caricature" (Cotsell13) or for others who cannot seem to forgive Dickens's embarrassingsentimentalism, or still others who might feel the novel's ending forced(Gross; Hutter), a thoroughly Girardian reading of the novel can help touncover the seriousness and hum an depth of A Taie.

A Girardian Excursion

Ren Girard's theories of mimetic desire, the sacred, and victimizationprovide an anthropology of culture and hum an societies perhaps m ore wide-ranging, and yet suppler, than any of the chief postmodern philosophicalparadigm s. He offers no thing short of a theo ry of the origins of culture and


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D I C K E N S ' S A TALE OF TWO CITIES A N D R E N G I R A R D 7

in sharp contrast to m any of his pos tm od ern peers, largely as a result of hisseriously engaging religiously informed understandings of our world. AsChris Fleming has put it,Girard's work ... has not simply entertained [religious reflections] atthe hermeneutic levelas scholars such as Paul Ricoeur and RudolfOtto have donebut has instead attempted to carry out a wholesaleepistemological inversion which asserts that the traditions that most"educated" minds regard as supernatural fantasyJudaism andChristianitytell us much more about the "natural" paroxysms ofviolence found in the modern world than the social sciences to whichwe claim undying allegiance. (150)Alongside this bold "inversion," the interdisciplinary scope that histheories encompasswith practitioners in literature, theology, psychology,anthropology, and historyattests to G irard's m ore rem arkable achievementsand represents a good reason to suppose his thought will be influential forsome time to come.Since the publication of M ensonge romantique et vrit romanesquein 1961, Girard has been elaborating on and refining his thinking abouthuman beings and the societies they inhabit. The centerpiece of this workis the concept of "mimetic desire," which for Girard is the idea that humanbeings are by their nature imitative creatures. In his words, "we tend to desirewhat our neighbor has or what our neighbor desires" {I See Satan Fall LikeLightning 8). But while mimetic desire is "intrinsically good," allow^ing us totranscend the realm of the purely animal (J See 15-16), it is also the genesisof violence and discord within societies. A properly channeled expressionof mimetic desire ends in love and self-giving, la an imitation of Christ(not unlike his imitation of the Father), but when mimetic desire turns tomimetic rivalry, the "imitation of a model who becomes a rival or of a rivalwho becomes a model," what results is a mimetic crisis, where individualmim etic rivalries spread and become pervasive within hum an com munities,resulting in conflicts of "all against all" {I See 8-13). This creates a cycleof mimetic violence the climax of which occurs when the community,itching to cure itself of the ubiqu itous disaccord, transfers its collective andindividual animosities onto an innocent victim, the "scapegoat," making


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a newfound peace. This process of blaming the victim for the ills of thecommunity while also attributing to the victim the power responsible forthe new order and tranquility Girard has called "double transference" (/ See72).

Girard has linked these theories with primitive societies and ideas ofritual and sacrality.'' He has shown in book -length works like The Scapegoatand / See Satan Fall Like Lightninghow these notions of mim etic desire andthe cycle of mimetic violence can be found concealed in the Oedipus mythand other myths and also how the Bible, and to some extent literature,^exposes the scapegoat mechanism of human communities, renderingit powerless. And along with important interpreters and practitioners ofhis theories,^ he has shown how, although more active and potent in oldercom munities, these realities still perv ade m od ern civilizations. They are, infact, palpably depicted in D ickenss A Tale of Two Cities.

True Love and W ar

J. Hillis Miller has said that A Tale "dramatizes Dickenss new conceptof love against the background of the French Revolution. Love and warare here metaphorically related" (247). Although Dickens's "love" iscertainly not newit is in fact an understanding of love deeply affectedby biblical valuesMiller's formulation underlines the most importantcontrast in a novel of contrasts. The world of the French Revolution, thepolitical implications gestured at through the novel's relation of Englandand the Continentthese are distractions or, better, scaffolding for thenovel's subtler interests, a more general (but more incisive) considerationof human communities and the fundamental dynamics animating suchcommunities."* From the perspective of the political or historical noveltraditions, A Tale may look naive and inaccurate; from the vantage pointof anthropology, however, it seems a far greater achievem ent. W here A Talefails to capture th e political situation of the Revolution, still less the cultu ralmatrix of nineteenth-century Europe, it succeeds in its subtler analysis ofmore vital impulses and behavior.

If Miller correctly outlines the structural composition of the novel, or


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DiCKENs's A TALE O F TWO CITIES A N D R E N G I R A R DJust as it was a time and a world of the "best" and the "worst," "theseason of Light" and the "season of Darkness" (1.1.5), so too is it a world

where the good mimetic desire of Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay, andtheir friends and family is presented alongside of the mimetic desire-cum-mimetic rivalries of the crowd and the leaders and instigators of thecrowd." The final action depicted in the novel is not unlike the action ofthe Cospels as read by Girard. The crowd, animated by "Satan" in Cirard'santhropological sense of the term (/ See 32-46), seizes upon the innocentvictim, charges him falsely, and then ritually murders him for the sake ofgreater communal harmony and peace. As in the Cospels, Dickenss novelexposes this scapegoat mechanism for what it is (the collective murder ofinnocence), and the hero of the novel"the scapegoat"willingly acceptsin love and renunciation his being sacrificed.

Mimetic and Triangular Desire in Darnay's First Trial SceneIn his early study Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Cirard outlined histheory of "triangular desire," which holds that desire exhibits a triangularstructure, comprising the self, the med iator (or mod el), and the object thatthe self desires because it is desired, or is perceived to be desired, by themediator / model.'-^ Contrary to Romantic notions of spontaneous desire,Cira rd holds that desire and hum an relations in general are "interdividual"'^:interdepe nden t on individuals (I See 137). O ur desire, then, results from andis directly related to the desires of those around us, those whom we chooseas our mediator / models ("Desire according to Another," as he refers to it at

one point) {Deceit 4). .W ithin these general param eters, Cirard emphasizes the importance of"distance," or spiritual proximity of the subject (self) to the mediator. Such"distance" is "spiritual" because , while physical distance m ay be significant,the degree to which the worlds of the subject and of the mediator intersectis of prim ary importance (and this factor does not necessarily correlate withphysical distance). Closely related to this is the idea of "internal mediation"and "external mediation." In the former case, the subject-mediatorrelationship with the object is one of competition and rivalry, while in the


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and The Vengeance). In Stephen Koch's words, she should be seen as"incarnating everything that ought to be desired and loved in life" (362).The scene of Darnay's first trial is a profound dep iction of Lucie M anette'ssituation as object of desire and of the triangular structural features thatGirard sees as constitutive of desire. Because of this, it is w^orth conside ringin some detail.

On trial for treason, Darnay is placed under a mirror so that the lightshining may reflect down and illuminate his person. He notices a "bar oflight across h is face" and " [looks] up," seeing a reflection of his "face flushed"(IL2.66). He turns his gaze from this and looks toward his left, where hecatches sight of Lucie Manette and her father. The crowd imitates Darnay'sgaze, and "all the eyes that were turned upo n him , turne d to them" (IL2.66).These "starers," who did not themselves pity their object of transference(Darnay), "were touch ed byher," whispering to each other, "'W ho are they?'"(IL2.67).

That this chapter is named "The Sight" (IL2.61-7) only reinforcesthe action of mimeticism and of mimetic desire that it so compellinglydramatizes. Seeing is the means by which mimetic behavior is largelyachieved. Most of the imitation in the scene is enacted through visiblegestures. At first, the crowd's "sight" is fixed up on the scapegoat. D arnay's"sight" rests upon his own image reflected in the mirror. The text gives noexplanation for why he looks in the direction of Lucie, though it wouldseem tenable to suggest that it is the result of his being somewhat unse ttledat the "sight" of his own reflection (seeing himself as the crowd sees him,a criminal and the object of hatred). His sighting of Lucie and Dr. Manetteis, then, arbitrary and by chance, the result of his wanting to see himselfas anything other than as the crowd sees him. This seeking out, this needto find a proper object for his "sight," one that might reverse the crowd's"sight" of him, can perhaps account for the abruptness with which hefixates on Lucie and her father. They are not of the crowd. They are full of"compassion" and "pity" for him , and this, in a room full of a brutal crowdwhose ire is directed at him (IL2.67), is a refuge. Darnay's sighting of Lucieand her father, his first "sight" of what will becom e h is object of desire, doesnot incur in him a "lie of spontaneou s desire" (Deceit 16) but instead is the


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whom many eyes are directed" (11.3.75), looks out upon the crowd (andDarnay) and is "unconsciously imitated" (II.3.75) by them. Then, we aretold that "w hen the Judge looked up from his notes" the "foreheads" of thecrowd "might have been m irrors reflecting the witness" (II.3.75). But in thiscase, their imitation of Lucieher image is on their facescoexists withtheir implicit desire for her as an object (their desire for her is also presenton their faces). She is therefore both the object and the mediator / modelfor the crowd. Here that "fascination" {Deceit 10-12) that the subject canfeel for the rival / model seems present in the crowd in their imitation ofLucie, though it is perhaps undistinguishablebecause in this context theobject and model are the samefrom the fixation of desire that the crowdprojects onto her. Sydney Carton, who is also present though depicted asnot a part of the crowd (he is aloof from it in spending most of his timelooking at the ceiling, just as Darnay had b een ), is just as fixated on Lucie.The difference is that, in like manner with Darnay, Sydney takes up thecrowd's (and Darnay's) desire for Lucie but not the ir concom itant imitationof her. Unlike the crowd he does not resemble Lucie (he resembles Darnay,although it is significant that here at the outset the "strong resemblance"[11.3.79] is diminished).In a (biblical?) prefigurement of what is to come, Darnay's own situationand behavior po int to n ot only his desire for Lucie but also how h is desire isgrounded in m imesis. He is impelled to search for a model by the repugnancehe feels toward his own image, the object of hatred presented to him in themirror. His sight then rests upon Lucie and Doctor Manette. His desire isultimately a desire for being, a "metaphysical desire"'* for the likeness ofanother. Here such desire is clearly impelled by the hopelessness of Darnay 'ssituation and by the attractiveness of the agape-oriented relationship ofDoctor Manette and Lucie, the antithesis of the crowd's mim esis. And in fact,the novel emphasizes at word of his acquittal Darnay's mimesis of DoctorManette's being "Recalled to Life": "'If you had sent the message, "Recalledto Life", again,' muttered Jerry, as he turned, 'I should have known whatyou meant, this time.'" (II.3.82). Here Darnay imitates Doctor Manette'sresurrection at the novel's opening, just as Carton at the novel's close willimitate Darnay's.The first trial scene as a whole dem onstrates well the "interdividuality"


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exchanged between Darnay and Lucie for example, is seen upon closerexamination to be an expression of desire within a larger "structure." Thecloseness with which this scene has been considered here is justified notonly by its demonstration of mimetic structure but also because it gives aclear picture of the origins of triangular desire in the novel which can nowbe investigated more fully.

"Why Should You Particularly Like A M an W ho Resembles You?"In contrast to the crowd, the mediation of Darnay and Carton , and ofthat

circle of characters in general (including th e triangular relationship betweenDarnay, Doctor Manette, and Lucie), could be described as "external" inthat the mimetic desire expressed in these relationships is invariably of the"intrinsically good" variety. At every poin t w here objects of desire intersect,and therefore where the prospect of rivalry increases, the characters turnaway from resentm ent, jealousy, and envy in acts of sacrificial renunciatio n.Doctor Manette, for example, does not allow his love and need for hisdaugh ter to tu rn him against Darnay in a poisonous relationship of rivalry.Instead, he sacrifices h is wishes and allows his daugh ter to marry. D arnay,for his part, defers to D octor M anette in this m atter, telling him that he willonly ask for Lucie's hand if the D octor approves. Their triangu lar relationsh ipthenceforth is one of mutuality and respect, where nothing is hord ed andminimal mimetic competition exists.

The same is true for the triangular relationship between Darnay,Carton , and Lucie. W hat m akes this relationship of triangular desire m oreinteresting, though, is that by all available markers it should be one ofmimetic competition and rivalry. Carton's mediation should be internal,and his desire for Lucie should engender in him a hatred for his mediator/ model. But as we know this is not what happens. Amidst the seeminginevitability of mimetic desire, of the entanglement of the object of desireand the seeming closeness of distance between subject and mediator /model, Darnay and Carton do not enter into a mimetic competition forLucie. Carton's desire for Lucie, his imitation of Darnay, culminates insacrificial renunciation of the highest order, the exchanging of his life forDarnay's, and the u ltimate imitation of Darnay is in the end an imitation of


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D I C K E N S ' S A TALE OF TWO CITIES A N D R E N C I R A R D 13

shows. Shortly after Darnay is acquitted, after Darnay and Carton havespoken with each other (Darnay thank ing C arton for the part he has playedin his acquittal). Ca rton tu rns to a "glass that [hangs] against the wall" andspeaks to his reflection (about D arnay):

"Do you particularly like the man?" he muttered, at his own image;"why should you particularly like a man who resembles you?... What achange you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a m an,that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you mighthave been! Change places with him, and would you have been lookedat by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitatedface as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate thefellow." (II.4.89)

This passage gives us a clearer picture of Carton's desire, particularly howinterdividual it truly is. He desires not simply Lucie's blue eyes but to belooked at "as [Darnay] was" looked at. In other words, his desire for theobject (Lucie) is inextricably caught up with imitation of the mediator /model, Darnay. In order to fulfill and achieve the object of his desire, hemust "change places" with Darnay; without Darnay as a model / mediator(the someone to change places with) he could not conceive of a relationshipwith Lucie. His conclusion"You hate the fellow"shows well the potentialfor mimetic rivalry with Darnay. In fact. Carton has seemingly alreadycommitted himself to it. He has recognized his object of desire and alsothe obstacle / model that stands in his way. The stage would seem set formimetic violence to take its course.

W ith the character ofStryver, a situation of mimetic com petition presentsitself and is likewise relieved without the onset of destructive riva lry Stryverdecides to propose to Lucie but, when counseled against it by Lorry (whoknow s he will be tu rne d dow n), does no t follow thro ugh (11.12.147-54). Hisconversation prior to that with Carton gives a good sense of the nature ofhis desire for her. He observes that C arton has been to see Lucie as much ashe has. He announces his intention to m arry in a fashion that seems m oreinterested in Carton's reaction than the substance of his declaration: "Areyou astonished?" he says, "You approve?" (I I.l 1.145).As with the others, his


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they are visited only a few hours later by Sydney Carton, with a "ruggedair of fidelity about him" (11.20.214). He makes known to Darnay his"wish [that they] might be friends" and asks that he might be considered"a privileged person" in their home (11.20.214, 216). Again, the con ditionswould seem to be ripe for m imetic com petition. In Cirard's own exam ples,Stendhal and Flaubert, he establishes that when the mediator is "within thesame universe" of the he ro the mediation will be internal an d competitive{Deceit 7-9). In Dickenss novel, such conditions are clearly present. Thetwo cha racters penetrate the same world and have the same object of desire,Lucie, who also has a temporal existence am ong them . The situation wouldseem all the more conducive to rivalry when we consider Cirard's assertionthat the mo re drastic the m imetic doubling the mo re dangerous and mo relikely that the desire will turn toward violence (/ See 22-3). And yet Sydney,in the face of what would appear to be a rival (of one whom he resembles soclosely), extends the charitable gesture of friendship and seeks not rivalrybut solidarity. As readers of the novel know, he will not stop there; he willultimately give much morenothing short of the ultimate giftin hismimetic desire for Lucie.

Just as Cirard's understanding of human interconnection can helpus better to understand the significance and achievement of A Tale ofTwo Cities, so too might Dickens's mimetic world aid students of Cirardin coming to a fuller, more nuanced understanding of his conceptualframework. The anti-Romanticism of Cirardian theory, the attempt tolocate desire not within the individual's emotional or interior center butwithin an exterior, interdividual structure, shares a certain affinity withpostmodern constructivist orientations. Foucauldian readings of desire,,for example, would also seek to ground human desires and related notionsof identity in sources apart from the understanding self. But for Cirard,as Dickens's rendering can help to show, the element of human freedom,while at times diminished or problematized, is always present. The natureof mimetic desirewhether of rivalry or of conversionwhile affected bysituation and by external circumstances is never purely determined by suchcircumstances. Here the Christian direction of Girard's thought becomesmost evident. Sydney Carton's choice is the choice for self-sacrifice, for


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conducive to rivalry, the depictions of the crowd show the other avenue ofmimetic desire: mimetic contagion leading to collective violence.Dickens presents a very idiosyncratic picture of the Revolution. Heaccentuates the violent, the terrifying, th e paroxysmal savagery of the crowd.Many have questioned this em phasis, and D ickens has even been accused ofemploying prop agandistic strategies for it (Craig 86). W hen read in light ofGirard's theory of the scapegoat mechanism , however, Dickens's mimesis ofviolence can be understood as a particularly striking and accurate po rtrayalof confiict and disaccord in societies.'^In The Scapegoat, Girard sketches the general parameters in whichcollective violence occurs, along with its constitutive features: situationof crisis, the undiiferentiation of the crowd, and the differentiation of thevictim (12-23). These elements can be easily found in A Tale. The violenceof the novel takes place within the larger social crisis of that time, wherefamine and general disorder are norm ative. As a result, societal institutionsof law and order are not as strong, and conditions are conducive to "mobformation" (Scapegoat 12). The Parisian mob depicted here, holding "life

as of no account ... was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrificeit" (n.21.223). Defarge's wine-shop, the sight of the metaphorical mimeticcontagion in Book O ne, is the ep icenter of this rising sea, and the Defarges,Madame and Monsieur, lead the crowd, guiding them in their frenzy, "allarmed alike in hunger and revenge" (IL21.224). The word "alike" is not tobe overlooked.'^ It signifies the process of "mimetic doubling" wherebythe members of the crowd lose their difference and undergo a process ofundifferentiation.'^ This can be seen more generally throughout the workin the common dress (red caps, working class clothes) of "citizens." Themob first storms the Bastille, beheading the governor and seven others andsetting seven prisoners free (11.21.229). The overturning of the social orderinvolved in this constitutes a key element of collective violence. As Girardhas said, "Crowds com mo nly tu rn on those who originally held exceptionalpower over them" (Scapegoat 19). The governor is held responsible simplyfor being a governor. Because of his position, he is blamed for the ills of thecommunity (just as the King was blamed and subsequently beheaded).'*In addition, he is selected as a victim and persecuted largely because of hisdifference from the undiiferentiated community.


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Foulon, a wealthy aristocrat who is said to have "told the famished peoplethat they migh t eat grass" (11.22.231). The ills of the com munity, just as withthe governor, are attributed to Fou lon. The anxieties, the anger, and hatredof the community are channeled into the person of Foulon:

Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts,tearing their hair, and screaming. Foulon alive! Foulon who told thestarving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old fatherthat he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon whotold my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry withwant!... Hear me, my dead baby and mywithered father: I swear on myknees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! (II.22.232-3)

They continue on, asking that the mob might "rend Foulon to pieces... that grass may grow from him!" (11.22.233).^ Dickens here presents avivid representation of collective violence and mob persecution. Foulon,whatever crimes he may or may not have committed, certainly is not guiltyof all, or even any, of what was attributed to him by the mob. Nonetheless,he is dragged before the mob, ritually tortured, and collectively murdered,with "grass enough in [his] mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at thesight of" (11.22.234). Afterwards, there is peace in the community; to useGirard's idiom , Satan has cast out Satan: the p rinciple of mimetic rivalry andviolence has becom e the very thing that provides the remedy to the prob lemof mimetic rival and violence (if only tem porarily). "Sparks of cheerfulness"fly, and all rest in tranquility (11.22.235).

Both of these scenes describe the cycle of collective violence asunderstood by Girard. The mimetic crisis in the community, brought on atleast in part by famine and hunger, threatens a m imetic war of "all againstall." To relieve the mimetic crisis, the hatred, jealousy, and rage in thecom m unity are transferred to a scapegoat, one who exists in a relationshipof differentiation with the community. The scapegoat is blamed for the illsof the com munity and is ritually sacrificed as a cure. In the aftermath, peacereigns, for how ever brief a period.Is There a Pers ecu tion Text in This Class?


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understanding of A Tale. His comparative use of methodo logies, includingDerrida, Frye, and Girard, has produced interesting results for the novel andfor Girardian theory.^' But in only focusing on the idea of the "scapegoat" inGirard's thought,^^ and in a more secular conception, Hennelly's study doesnot take into account other aspects of Girard's work related to his theoriesof the "scapegoat" that further illuminate the scapegoat component and itslarger role in the novel.^^

The "language of Christian sacrifice," for exam ple, is ever-present in thenovel and has been recognized as such (Koch 364). Given this, and giventhe fact that the totality of Girard's theories contains an integrity which linksthese aspects, more direct connection between the scapegoat mechanism,mimetic violence, and the Christian conceptual matrix would seem to bewarranted.This is all the more important because, as Hennelly points out, thenovel is full of scapegoats; in fact, "almost every character at every levelof dramatic importance seems a 'scapegoat' of some kind or other" (225).Hennelly demonstrates well that the four stereotypes that Girard outlinesin The Scapegoat are all present in the novel. But perhaps because he hasonly considered Girard's theories in a comparative fashion with othertheorists like Derrida and Frye, Hennelly continually refers to the novel as a"persecution text" (225, 228). We must ask, from the stand poin t of Girard'sformulation, whether the novel is in fact a persecution text. A persecutiontext, according to G irard, is a text where "the representation of persecu tion[is] from the standpoint of the persecutor," one which conceals the "hiddenstructural principle" of the scapegoat mechanism and persecution as awhole. The antithesis of this is a text, like the Gospels, that "reveals the tru thof the persecution" and exposes the scapegoat mechanism for what it is{Scapegoat 119).One must acknowledge an element in the novel of the "covering up" ofviolence and the origins of violent acts. The story of the rape and death ofthe peasant girl, a crime that remains hidden for most of the novel, and thesymbolic concealing of the Monseigneur's death with the "Gorgon's Head"imagery help to show how, in Albert D. Hutter's phrasing , "the larger actionof the novel turns on seeing what was never meant to be seen" (91). Both


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referring to it until nearly the end but also by cloaking it in the symbolicphrase "the substance of the shadow" (Koch 354). As Stephen Koch hassaid, "Dickens himself drapes the crime in yards of symbohsm and Gothicobscurity," the crime that "initiates the novel's entire cycle of violence andguilt" (354).

But despite this, the final scene and the various depictions of mobviolence and of collective persecution place the novel firmly against "thestandpoin t of the persecutor" (Girard, Scapegoat 119). The novel quite clearlycondemns the violence of the Revolution, and more than that, it shows theinternal "hidden s tructure" at work within it. In every case, and in the trialsof Darnay in particular, the crowd is depicted as "demented with a passionatereadiness to sacrifice" arbitra ry v ictims (11.22.223). The text m akes clear atall points the injustice of the crowd and the ruthless persecution in theircollective violence. In the case of Foulon and the governor of the Bastillealready noted, the near-diabolic ferocity of the crowd and their fantasticclaims against the victims are mad e starkly clear. The m indset of those whoenact the pe rsecutions of the Revolution is unveiled from the outset.

In the chapter "A Sight" considered earlier, Jerry Cruncher enters thecourtroom and speaks to an anonymous member of the crowd about thema n on trial (Darnay)."Ah!" returned the man, with a relish; "he'll be drawn on a hurdle to

be half-hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his ownface, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on,and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters.That's the sentence.""If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?" Jerry added, by way ofproviso."Oh! they'llfindhim Guilty," said the other. "Don't you be afraid ofthat." (II.2.64)Dickens presents here another succinct, powerful portrayal of the crowd.In his dramatization of the ritual torture and cruelty of mob persecution,the blind insistence on the victim's guilt and the concomitant refusal to seethe victim as a victim, and the crowd's "relish" in violent ritualistic torture,Dickens has penetrated to the very core of the scapegoat mechanism. His


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DICKENS'S A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND REN GIRAR D 19Biblical Narrative M imesis

In a letter to Wilkie Collins just after he finished the novel, Dickenssaid that he believed it was art's duty to "shew, by a backward light, whateverything has been working tobut only to suggest, until the fulfillmentcomes. These are the ways of Providenceof w hich ways, all Art is but a littleimitation" (qtd. in Schlicke 550). For Dickens, Art is a narrative mimesisof Providence, where all comes into focus only after the fact. This is aninherently biblical enplotment. It contains within it a Christian philosophyof history important to understanding this historical novel. The Christiansymbolism and themes of the novel are well understood. But the novel'slikeness to the Cospels, to the Bible, is no t merely on the order of its highlyallusive character. It is, in its attempts to show the prevalence of mimeticdesire and its two tales (love and war), a mimetic narrative of the Cospelsthemselves.In Sydney Carton's triangular relationship with Darnay and Lucie, heseeks an imitation of Darnay, who is (as the first trial scene shows) theScapegoat. In this, his imitation of Darnay, who has himself rejected mimeticrivalry in his triangular relations with Lucie and Doctor Manette, leads tohis ultimate imitation: that of Christ, the Ur-Scapegoat, who gives himselfin sacrificial renunciation. Carton's sacrificial act therefore mimics Darnay'sself-giving love of Lucie and her father, even while it mimics Christ.If he is able to achieve at the novel's end a mimesis of Christ, Carton'sredemption includes himself He was at one time a promising young man(III.9.325), bu t he fell from tha t into a bad-tem pered life of wasteful drinking.He sees himself as a no-good, "a disappointed drudge ... [who cares] for noman on earth" and for whom no one cares (II.4.89). He does not believe heis capable of love, nor that anyone is capable of loving him. But with theentrance of Lucieand Darnay, for he cannot conceive of Lucie withoutDarnay^"*into his life, things change. As he tells her, "Since I knew you,I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproachme again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward,that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of strivingafresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting outthe abandoned fight" (11.13.157). Later in their conversation, the intuition


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2 0 C H R I S T I A N I T Y A N D L I T E R A T U R E

who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!" (11.13.159). Hisprescience is more than Dickens's artifice; she has awakened love withinhim, and not mere desire but agape, Christian self-sacrificing love. This isfollowed by real change. He comes to visit them but never "heated withwine" (11.21.219), and just before his death he has a meal without strongdrin k "for the first time in m any years" (III.12.351). And of course, the finaltransformation comes at the end where he does "a far, far better thing" thanhe has ever done (III.15.390).

But his im itation of Christ extends beyond sacrifice, into resurrection.-^^Resurrection in the sense of Carton's nam e living on in the D arnay family isobviously essential to the C hristian symbolism of the novel and to Carton'scharacterization as a kind of Christ. But Girard has said that "conversion isresurrection" (Reader 286). Conceived so, the very act of Carton discoveringhimself and changing, the very act of his sacrificial renunciation, whichrepresents a turnin g away from the failures of his life and tow ard the fullnessof his being, toward the fullest potential of his human capacity to love, isvery much a kind of "resurrection." The Gospel passage John 11:25-26^*that Carton recalls to mind several times throughout his final agony andpassion, when read in light of resurrection as a kind of conversion, acquiresall the m ore depth of mean ing.

But Carton's im itation of Christ, and the final scene's narrative m imesis,extends further. He dies at three p.m., the ho ur that Jesus gave himself upin sacrificial renunciation on Calvary. He is ritually murdered in an actof collective violence (the guillotine, his cross). He is murdered for the"crime"^'' of another. By his death, others live (he brings Darnay back tolife, twice). And can one take Carton's being the twenty-third victim to be areference to Psalm 23 (III. 15.389)?

Some have argued that the recounting of Carton's final thoughts, soconcerned they are with how he himself will live on as a result of his sacrificialact, undercuts the sacrificial nature of the act itself and therefore its Christ-likeness (Vanden Bossche 211). Self-sacrifice, however, need not be seenas an act out of which the one sacrificing expects nothing in return. JohnMilbank, in his article "The Ethics of Self-Sacrifice," has outlined the waysin which all gifts and sacrifices expect some return (however indeterminate


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D I C K E N S ' S A TALE O E TWO CITIES A N D R E N G I R A R D 2 1

Others have argued that the Christianizing of the story is exaggerated,forced, and not at all convincing (Kucich 133; Wlder 198). Reading theChristian aspect of the text in light of Girard's theories of triangular andmimetic desire can help us arrive at a more considered judgment in thisregard.TheChristian symbolism and them es in the novel become naturalizedand more palatable when read in light of these theories. Likewise, the actionsand motivations of Carton becom e m ore probable (and believable) and canbe justified to a greater extent in the reader's eyes.

Con clusion and N ovelistic Conc lusionsGirard has said that "all novelistic conclusions are conversions" andthat "every novelistic conclusion is a beginning " {Deceit 294, 297). The finalthoughts of Sydney Carton that end the novel represent the consummationof his conversion toward self-sacrificing love, and at the same time thebeg inning of his true liberation from death, his resurrec tion and eternal "rest."The novel's depiction of this sacrificial self-giving, the proper expressionof mimetic desire (Carton becomes Darnay and Christ), is contrasted andmade even m ore explicit by the m imetic violence of the crowd, caught upin the cycle of violence, the principle of "Satan." But just as in the Gospeltexts, thoug h darkness may have its hour, in the end the spirit of God, theprinciple of self-sacrificial love, triu m ph s over "Satan," the spirit of mimeticrivalry.In this way, the tale of two mimeses explored here can be related onboth a textual and a meta-textual axis, depending on wh ether one considers

the mimesis in the novel or the m imesis of the novel: that is, the tale of loveand war in the text (itself a tale of two mim eses, love and w ar) and the taleof Dickens's mimesis of the Gospel. The present study has been an attemptat (a tale of?) considering both possibilities and relating each to the other.Tiie Catiioiic University of A merica

NOTES


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22 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE

a good discussion of A Tale as historical novel, see Robert Alter, "TheDemons of History in Dickens' Tale" Gareth Stedman Jones has referred to thenovel as a "warning" to the British public that the country could go the way ofFrance as a result of inaction and unreasonable contentment (17-18).

^Dickens's mimetic aspirations with regard to the Bible should not be seen ascontroversial, given that he has referred to the New Testament as "the best bookthat ever was or will be known in the world" (qtd. in Ackroyd 505).

"See Janet L. Larson, Dickens and the Broken Scripture; Jane Vogel, Allegory inDickens; and Kenneth Sroka, "A Tale of Two Gospels: Dickens and John."

'Kenneth M. Sroka conceives of the novel as, perhaps, "another Victoriangospel"' (145). Gary L. CoUedge has referred to Dickens's "practical or ethicalChristology" (126).

"For a good discussion of this phenomenon in the Bible, see Girard's ThingsHidden since the Foundation of the World, 140-80.

^See, in particular. Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden since theFoundation of the World: Research Undertaken in Collaboration with Jean-MichOughourlin and Guy Lefort.

'Girard has acknowledged the central role that literary works have played inthe development of his theories: "the only texts that ever discovered mimetic desireand explored some of its consequences are literary texts. I am speaking here not ofall literary texts, not of literature per se, but of a relatively small group of works....Implicitly and sometimes explicitly, these works reveal the laws of mimetic desire"(Introduction to "To Double Business Bound," vii-viii).

'See Cesreo Bandera, The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesiof Modern Literary Fiction, and Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at theCrossroads.

'"Even if the novel penetrates beneath such strata, the political and socioculturaldimensions of the novel remain essential to understanding A Tale and its author.Much valuable work has been done in this area. Gareth Stedman Jones, HilarySchor, and Richard Myers represent a few of the more recent examples.

"This group / individual binary and the related public / private binarieshave been noted and developed by scholars in different theoretical contexts. See,for example. Cates Baldridge and Albert D. Hutter. The present study relates itspecifically to the love / war opposition.

' For a complete theoretical presentation of triangular desire, see Girard, Deceit,Desire, and the Novel, 1-52.

"This concept is also dealt with more extensively in Things Hidden Since theFoundation of the World.


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DICKENS'S A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND REN GIRARD 23

'^For an extended discussion of how words of likeness and unlikeness,sameness and difference, work in the novel, see Mark M. Hennelly's article "Like orNo Like."''The disappearance of important differences with regard to gender is interestingas well. The women, for example, are decapitators (see Madame Defarge's beheadingof the governor [n.21.229]) with the same ferocity as the men.

'*See The Scapegoat for an interesting discussion of Marie Antoinette's beheadingand the charge against her of incest (20-21).

"Something Girard sees as common in more modern societies, where thescapegoat mechanism has been exposed to a greater or lesser degree. See The GirardReader, 16.

The imagery here echoes the Osiris myth, whereby the dead god is the soil fromwhich sprouts the harvest. Given what Girard says about the Gospel as anti-myth,and about myth as the purveyor of collective violence, this point is significant.

^'Similarities drawn between Derrida and Girard's idea of the pharmakon andbetween Girard's undifferentiation and Derrida's la differance are fruitful from atheoretical, as well as from a critical, perspective.

^^He cites only The Scapegoat both in the paper and in the bibliography.^^Hennelly's comparative use of methodologies has yielded worthwhile results.

But it may be fair to say that Girard's theories and their interaction with the novelhave not been allowed a full application because of Hennelly's methodologicaleclecticism.

"His admission, considered earlier, that "a good reason for taking to a man [is],that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been!"(11.4. 89) shows the extent to which Darnay, just as much if not more than Lucie,can be said to be the cause of his amelioration.

^'See Andrew Sanders, Charles Dickens, Resurrectionist.^*"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me,

though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me,shall never die" (II1.9.325).

"The epithet "crime" should be used loosely; Darnay is in effect innocent of thecrime charged to him.

WORKSCITEDAckroyd, Peter. Dickens. London: Sinclair-Stevenson Limited, 1990.Alter, Robert. "The Demons of History in Dickens' Tale'.' Novel 2 (1968-9): 135-42.Bailie, Gil. Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. New York: Crossroad,


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Bandera, Cesreo. The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis ofModern Literary Fiction. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1994.

Colledge, Gary L. "The Life of Our Lord Revisited." Dickens Studies Annual 36(2005): 125-51.

Cotsell, Michael A. "Introduction." Gritical Essays on Charles Dickens's A Tale ofTwo Cities. Ed. Michael A. Cotsell. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998.1-15.

Craig, David. "The Crowd in Dickens." The Changing World of Charles Dickens.Ed. Robert Giddings. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1983.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Ed. Richard Maxwell. New York: Penguin,2003.

Fleming, Chris. Ren Girard: Violence and Mimesis. Maiden, MA: Polity, 2004.Girard, Ren. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965.

."To Double Business Bound": Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and AnthroplogyBaltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978..The Girard Reader. Ed. James G. Williams. New York: Crossroad Herder, 1996..Mensonge romantique et vrit romanesque. Paris: Grasset, 1961../ See Satan Fall like Lightning. MaryknoU, New York: Orbis, 1998..The Scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986..Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World: Research Undertaken inCollaboration with Jean-Michel Oughourlin and Guy Lefort. Stanford: StanforUP, 1987..Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1977.

Goldberg, Michael. Carlyle and Dickens. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1972.Gross, John. "A Tale of Two Cities" Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Tale of

Two Gities. Ed. Charles E. Beckwith. Englewood Glifs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,1972.

Hennelly, Mark M. Jr., " 'Like or No Like': Figuring the Scapegoat in A Tale of TwoCities" Dickens Studies Annual. Vol. 30 (2001). 217-42.

Hutter, Albert D. "Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities." Critical Essayson Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Ed. Michael A. Gotsell. New York:G.K. Hall, 1998. 89-110.

Hutton, Laurance, ed. The Dickens-Collins Letters. New York. 1892.Jones, Gareth Stedman. "The Redemptive Power of Violence?: Garlyle, Marx, and

Dickens." History Workshop Journal 65 (Spring 2008): 1-22.Koch, Stephen. "Afterward." A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. New York:

Bantam, 1989.Kucich, John. "The Purity of Violence: A Tale of Two Cities" Critical Essayson Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Ed. Michael A. Gotsell. New York:


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DICKENS'S A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND REN GIRARD 25Myers, Richard. "Politics of Hatred in A Tale of Two Cities" Poets, Princes, and

Private Citizens: Literary Alternatives to Postmodern Politics. Eds. JosephM. Knippenberg and Peter Augustine Lawler. Lanham, MD: Rowman &Littlefield, 1996. 63-74.

Oddie, William. Dickens and Carlyle. London: Centenary, 1972.Sanders, Andrew. Charles Dickens, Resurrectionist. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 1982..The Companion to "A Tale of Two C/fi'es." London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.

Schor, Hilary "Novels of the 1850s: Hard Times, Little Dorrit, and A Taleof Two Cities" The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Ed. John O.Jordan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 64-77.

Schlicke, Paul, ed. Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford UP, 1999.Sroka, Kenneth. "A Tale of Two Cospels: Dickens and John." Dickens Studies

Annual 27 (1999): 145-69.Stewart, Garrett. Death Sentences: Style of Dying in British Fiction. Cambridge:

Harvard UP, 1984.Vanden Bossche, Chris R. "Prophetic Closure and Disclosing Narrative: The

French Revolution and A Tale of Two Cities." Dickens Studies Annual 12(1983): 209-21.

Vogel, Jane. Allegory in Dickens. U of Alabama P, 1977.Wlder, Denis. Dickens and Religion. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981.


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