Dickens and Fantasy
Join me as I embark on a thematic reading experience of pairing A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens with its fantasy retelling counter part A Far Better Thing by HG Parry.
A Tale of Two Cities is set against the backdrop of the years directly preceding the French Revolution. Charles Dickens apparently had an appreciation of Thomas Carlyle’s French Revolution book and was also inspired to tackle writing about a love triangle when acting for charity in his friend Wilkie Collins play called “The Frozen Deep.”
A Tale of Two Cities begins with the mysterious delivery of a message on a foggy, eerie night. Later, the story takes us to a graveyard, where we reflect on someone who has been buried alive for 18 years. This ties beautifully to A Far Better Thing, which opens in a graveyard too as someone is digging up a human bone to deliver to the fairy realm.
But in Dickens’s Tale, we meet the Defarges, Mr. Lorry, Miss Manette, and her father five years before A Far Better Thing begins.
A Far Better Thing plunges us almost immediately into the courtroom in the middle of a trial which skips over the early chapters of A Tale of Two Cities. We encounter Sydney Carton, Stryver, Charles Darnay, and Miss Manette as it’s revealed that the narrator is Sydney Carton, whom we don’t meet until much later in Dickens’s novel.
We also meet Shadow, a mysterious figure from the fae realm who interferes in the main characters’ lives without the fae court’s permission. Dickens often describes “shadows in the night,” and named an early chapter “Night Shadows.” which seems like a connection to this Shadow character.
A Far Better Thing also introduces characters with apothecary and magic skills and even takes us briefly into the fairy realm. It’s impressive how Parry weaves minor characters from Dickens’s novel into her story, expanding their roles into important supporting figures.
So much is related in both of these books: chapters both being named similarly such as alluding to a storm when referring to the coming consequences of the revolution and even the character motivations based on the original love triangle.
A Tale of Two Cities is much more of a treatise on the lack of impartiality in society due to poverty and it focuses much more on the politics of espionage by the rebels and government alike in France. As the story unfolds, we discover the identity of the leader of the revenge movement. While this character may not inspire sympathy, Dickens allows readers to understand the motivations behind the uprising, especially given the oppression of the aristocracy. Through personification, particularly of poverty as a living force, Dickens effectively illustrates the desperation that drives the cruelty of the revolution.
H.G. Parry’s literary techniques emphasizes the role of the fae in disrupting human politics and social hierarchies. These fantasy elements enrich the original tale and deepen our understanding of the unrest that fueled the French Revolution. We start to understand that each person in poverty has their own individual reasons for being angry with the nobles, and when these individuals, these peasants join together by shared circumstances or injustices, they form an unstoppable collective force.
