The Speed of Communication in A Tale of Two Cities: The Technological Difference between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

Recent studies have indicated that A Tale of Two Cities depicts the French Revolution as a critical period in which information technologies had developed and information transmission had accelerated and that it thereby represents the idea that social changes and technological development are inseparable. Those studies, however, have paid little attention to the end of Book 2 and the beginning of Book 3 of the work. These chapters clearly illustrate the impact of the means of communication on people’s lives, making them the most significant part of this work of fiction in regard to its consciousness of communication. This paper verifies that the aforementioned chapters are crucial for comprehending the understanding of the media presented in this work. This study first focuses on the dates of events in which those chapters progress. The time they span is sufficient to deliver messages from Paris to London by telegraph but is not long enough to do so without electric wires. It then reaffirms the meaning of the dates by examining the fact that Charles Dickens had set this scene in winter before changing his manuscript. Finally, it analyses Darnay’s travel across the English Channel, which is repeatedly impeded, to clarify that this novel delineates the substantial gap of communication between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.