What we Saw with our Eyes in the Corners

There were two focal points in seminar today.  For part of our time, we each presented in brief our ideas for our seminar project.  There are an array of ideas for teaching both Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities in a variety of classroom settings, including both English and social studies classrooms, middle school and high school settings, and various levels of student readiness.  What all of these ideas seem to have in common is each teacher’s desire to make these works of Dickens accessible and relevant to his or her students and to use Dickens’ works to open students’ minds to essential questions about human nature and social justice.  Best of all, we plan to have a shared repository of ideas and best practices that we can all use and continue to augment and revise.

The lion’s share of our time today was devoted to the discussion of Book the Second, Chapter 7 of A Tale of Two Cities:  “Monsieur the Marquis in Town.”  We focused on numerous themes and motifs which are addressed in this chapter and will continue to carry significance in the novel.  These include:

·      Dickens’ use of satire to criticize the excesses of the French nobility, which contrasts sharply with the poverty of St. Antoine

·      the hierarchal, ritualistic, and orderly nature of the French aristocracy, which will foil the chaos of the revolutionary mob

·      the motifs of “seeing” and “not seeing” as manifested by the Monseigneur, the Marquis, and Madame Defarge

·      related to “seeing,” the question of whether Dickens is moralizing in this novel or simply suggesting we should bear witness

·      a related question: Is Dickens criticizing movement between social classes?

·      the recurring mention of “corners” and their relationship to “seeing,” turning points, “footsteps” (the passage of time), the intersection of converging ideas, and the intersection of class

·      the foiling of aristocratic and peasant women, specifically as related to motherhood

·      water imagery and diction – the “heave” of water and its connection to the imagery of the wheel and fate

·      related criticism and scholarly readings, most specifically the essay “Charles Dickens” by George Orwell

We also discussed the pivotal event in this chapter – that the carriage of the Marquis strikes and kills a young peasant boy and how the theme of justice (or the lack thereof) comes into sharp focus (literally through the “seeing” motif) at that moment with the reactions of the Marquis, the peasants, and Madame Defarge.