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The Humanistic Features in A Tale of Two Cities

I. Introduction

Charles Dickens, the author of A Tale of Two Cities, was the greatest English critical realist in Victorian age. He was the most widely read author of great powers, and he is almost acceptable to readers of all ages and of widely differing mental capacities. (Churchill,119) Pickwick Papers (1836), Oliver Twist (1837), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations(1860) were his greatest works among his fourteen major novels. A Tale of Two Cities was his historical novel in which Dickens lays out a brilliant plot of a story happened between France and England during the French Revolution.
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote two main thread of the plot, one is the career of Dr. Manette who suffered eighteen year in the Bastille, and another is the love of Lucie Manette who help her father Dr. Manette recalled his mind.
In the novel, Dr. Manette was imprisoned by Evrémonde for writing a letter to Minister exposing the crime of Evrémonde who had killed the sister and brother of Defarge. Eighteen years later, his daughter Lucie fell in love with nephew of Evrémonde Darnay. After one year, Darnay was caught by the revolutionaries. For the crimes of Darnay’s ancestors, the revolutionaries sentenced him to die within twenty-four hours. Sydney Carton visits Darnay in prison, tricks him into changing clothes with him. Carton dies with the knowledge that he has finally imbued his life with meaning.

II. Literature Review

Andrew Sanders, in his Charles Dickens resurrections in 1982, praised the humanism of the novel A Tale of Two Cities :
To Dickens A Tale of Two Cities was not merely a historical novel, or a fictional tract on the evils of revolution, or even symbolic romance on the theme of humanism, though all of these were contained within it.
George Bernard Shaw compared the humanism...