The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 17-20

Chapter Seventeen:  One Night
In which Doctor Manette talks about The Past.

• Doctor Manette on looking at the moon from prison and thinking about what he'd unwillingly left behind:

"I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent.  Whether it was still alive.  Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it.  Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father.  (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for revenge was unbearable.)  Whether it was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own will and act.  Whether it was a daughter who would grow up to be a woman." 

That was it?  All that time to imagine possibilities for his unborn, unknown child and that was the only option he came up with for the female.  Nice, Doctor Manette.  Reeeeeeally nice.

• Oh, but then he talks about imagining his unknown daughter coming to his cell and whatnot.  So Imaginary Lucie still didn't get to have any vengeance fun, but at least she was a comfort.
• Have we ever even heard Lucie's mother's name? 
• "Gaunt" is the last word I'd have expected to see attached to Miss Pross.  Maybe she hasn't been eating because she's upset about her little turtledove getting hitched.
• Awww.  Sydney Carton isn't invited to the wedding?  I was hoping for AT LEAST a Jacob-Black-style minor freakout.  I apologize, Charles Dickens.  I should not sully your work with thoughts of sparkly vampires.  Lucie is nothing like Bella.  Charles, though, is a bit like Edward.  Okay.  NO MORE DICKENS/MEYER COMPARISONS WILL BE MADE.

Chapter Eighteen:  Nine Days
In which there is a wedding and a relapse.

• Oh, I forgot about Miss Pross's brother Solomon.  It's too bad that she has such a soft spot for such a bad egg.
• My hopes are still high for a Lorry/Pross union.  Even if that doesn't happen, they should live next door to each other and, I don't know, bicker constantly:

"Really? Well; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry.
"I am not crying," said Miss Pross; "you are."
"I, my Pross?" (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.)

"My Pross"!  See, there's hope.  What, by the way, is Charles Darnay up to?  Where's he at?

• And more:

"You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the gentleman of that name.
"Pooh!" rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in your cradle."
"Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, "that seems probable, too."
"And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you were put in your cradle."
"Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very unhandsomely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern."

• "...the well-remembered expression on the forehead..."  I'm still having a hard time with her forehead.  TadMack, why oh why did you have to go and point it out to me!!?
• Ah.  Darnay must have told the Doctor whatever it was that he was going to tell him.  Like who his family really is, perhaps?
• Uh oh.  Doctor Manette has relapsed.  I wonder if it's less the wedding and more what Darnay told him...
• Wow.  Mr. Lorry took leave from Tellson's to take care of Doctor Manette.  That is HUGE.
• And now Doctor Manette is REALLY good at making shoes.  Uh oh.

Chapter Nineteen:  An Opinion
In which I decide I am totally head-over-heels in love with Mr. Lorry.

• Mr. Lorry is such a great guy.  He's, like, the Best Friend Ever.  If anything remotely bad happens to him I'm going to be horribly upset.  I love his reaction to waking up and discovering that Doctor Manette seems to be back to semi-normal:

Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own...it was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the answer being obvious.  If the impression were not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there?

I heart him.  On the next page, Mr. Lorry bathes and whatnot, and then shows up for breakfast "in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg".  I love how he tries so hard to look imperturbable.  And I love that he's vain about his legs.

• Poor Doctor Manette.  He knows that he relapsed, but doesn't remember it and doesn't even know how long it's been.  "Of how long duration?"  That's just heartbreaking.  And Mr. Lorry is being so careful and so thoughtful of his feelings.  I LOVE HIM.
• I also love that he has almost no imagination whatsoever.  When looking for a way of replacing "shoemaking" in his conversation with Doctor Manette about his hypothetical friend, he chooses "Blacksmith's work".  He rules.  [A thought:  I don't think it is the tiny amount of beer I've just had that is making me love him so.  But it should be noted that I've had some.]
• I hope that the destruction of the shoemaker's bench will bring Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross closer together:

So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.

Chapter Twenty:  A Plea
In which I decide that Miss Manette is so lame that Charles Dickens himself couldn't have really liked her.

• Sydney!  I think it must be the beer, because now I kind of love you, too!:

"Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might be friends."

• OMG, he's even smiling??  I didn't know he knew how.
• And Mr. Darney gets points for this, in regards to Stryver:  "I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his."
• "...that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me), an unornamental, piece of furniture..."  Ha ha ha ha ha.  Sydney Carton, you're okay. 
• Lucie and her forehead, however, still fail to impress me.  I hope that Dickens thought she was lame, too.  It's hard to believe that he could have liked her -- "What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!" -- it's so gag-inducing that it seems like he's almost mocking the two of them there...
• "She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours."  Okay, I REFUSE to believe that he isn't mocking them there.  They are TOTALLY LAME.  Sydney, if you could get out of your own way, you'd be way too cool for this nonsense.

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Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9
Book the Second, Chapters 10-12
Book the Second, Chapters 13-16

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Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland

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Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

Comments

[Heidi]

hehe. I should try that, a little alcohol.

I think you and TadMack understood that Darnay/Carton exchange much better than I did.

While I quite liked Mr. Lorry's method of therapy, I couldn't quite believe the doctor's lack of self-knowledge. Maybe a little alcohol would help. It might also help me forget my apparently strained shoulder...I can't ignore the pain...yet I have no idea how I injured it, and it's wearing me out. Maybe I had a relapse like the doctor.

Maybe just maybe I'll get caught up tonight with my new method of using Google Notebook.

[Soxisissizink]

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