The Individual under the Repressive State: Political Consciousness in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities

Abstract

This thesis, through Marxist perspective, especially Karl Marx’s theory of class consciousness and George Lukacs’ History and class consciousness, makes critical analysis of class struggle and class consciousness portrayed in Charles Dickens’A Tale of Two Cities.In the novel, the proletariats become conscious about their class, class-ideology and socio-economic condition because of their constant antagonistic relationship with the aristocrats and appalling poverty. It also exposes Dickens’ anti-revolutionary view. Although Dickens has sympathy forthe proletariats, calls for improving their pathetic condition and opines that the aristocrats should not exploit and suppress the proletariats, he ironically rejects the idea of granting freedom through revolution. Dickens concludes that the proletariatsshould create history by sacrificing their own lives to save the aristocrats. After conducting research on Dickens’A Tale of Two Cities, this thesis claims that Dickens, because of his first hand experience of poverty, suppression, exploitation and injustice, sympathises the proletariats, but, as a middle-class-man, he rejects the idea of granting freedom through revolution.