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