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A daily record of what I'm thinking about what I'm reading

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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The asexuality of London in Tale of Two Cities

Yes of course Dickens is an English novelist but let's get real - compare the French scenes with the English scenes and you'll see that A Tale of Two Cities is truly about the best of time and the worst of times, and the worst are in France and the best in London - as we read the harrowing scene of the revolution in suburban Paris, Saint Antoine, and Dickens aptly describes the nobility and their lackeys who literally made the people eat grass (let the east les herbes), but when the people rise up against this oppression, to Dickens they seem like horrible and frightful thugs. Is he against the French people? No, not as long as the move to London, because there, in the next chapter, we see the British bank or counting house, Tellsons, where the money of the French nobility is safely stashed away, and the Frenchman in exile, Darney, is as kind a noble a person as can be and he decides to help his friend, the banker Lorry, in a secret and dangerous mission back to Paris to secure the bank's funds still in France. Again and again, the British are at worst eccentric (except for the London crowds, which can be crude and dangerous, or the working poor, like Cruncher, who are pretty brutal) and French, even when in a noble cause, are frightful and odd, withe pseudonyms (they're all called "Jacques"). The British are also strangely asexual and desexual - the only one in London who seems to have a sexual relation with a spouse or anybody else is the French exile Darney.

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